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Virginia  Life 


Fiction 


by 

JAYB.HUBBELL 


Virginia  JJife 


Fiction 


By 

JAY  BROADUS  HUBBELL,  PH.  D. 

Submitted  in  Partial  Fulfilment  of  the  Re- 
quirements for  the  Degree  of  Doctor 
of  Philosophy,  in  the  Faculty 
of  Philosophy  y  Columbia 
University 

DALLAS 
1922 


Virginia  Ifife 


in 


Fiction 


By 

JAY  BROADUS  HUBBELL,  PH.  D, 

E.  A.  Lilly  Professor  of  English  in 
Southern  Methodist  University 


133 


TO 


Judge  William  3.  31.  «£mith 


MONOGRAPH  has  been  approved  by  the 
Department  of  English  and  Comparative  Lit- 
erature in  Columbia  University  as  a  contribution 
to  knowledge  worthy  of  publication. 

A.  H.  THORNDIKE 

Execiitive  Officer 


487142 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE; 

I.  INTRODUCTION  .        .        .        .                 .        .7 

II.  COLONIAL  VIRGINIA 41 

III.  THE:  REVOLUTION 45 

IV.  THE:  OLD  REGIME 48 

V.  THE  CIVIL  WAR .50 

VI.  MODERN  VIRGINIA 53 

BIBLIOGRAPHY         . 55 

VITA  79 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [5 


PREFACE 

When  I  began  this  study  seven  years  ago,  I  hoped  to  do 
for  my  native  state,  if  possible,  what  Mr.  H.  S.  Krans  has 
so  delightfully  done  for  Ireland  in  his  Irish  Life  in  Irish 
Fiction.  I  did  not  foresee  that  tihe  different  nature  of  my 
materials  would  force  me  to  write  a  very  different  kind  of 
book.  In  particular,  I  failed  to  see  that  I  should  be  com- 
pelled to  devote  so  much  space  to  historical  legends,  which 
are  so  intimately  connected  with  Virginia  fiction  that  they 
could  not  be  ignored.  I  hope  no  one  will  think  that  my  com- 
ments upon  the  makers  of  these  legends  are  malicious.  I 
have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  far  too  little  attention  has 
been  paid  to  the  very  close  connection  between  Ameri- 
can fiction  and  American  social  history.  In  a  study  of  the 
other  backgrounds  of  American  fiction,  on  which  I  am  now 
working,  I  hope  to  do  for  other  sections  what  I  have  done 
for  Virginia. 

This  dissertation  was  completed  over  two  years  ago,  and 
it  would  have  been  printed  in  full  and  at  a  much  earlier 
date  but  for  a  rascal  of  a  publisher  into  whose  hands  I  was 
so  unlucky  as  to  fall.  For  this  abstract  I  have  rewritten  and 
expanded  my  introductory  chapter  so  that  it  now  contains 
the  more  important  conclusions  of  a  three-hundred-page 
manuscript.  The  five  other  chapters  are  very  briefly  epit- 
omized, but  the  bibliography  is  printed  entire. 

I  wish  to  express  my  appreciation  of  the  courtesy  of  Dr. 
H.  R.  Mcllwaine  of  the  Virginia  State  Library  and  of  the 
officials  of  the  New  York  Public  Library  and  of  the 
libraries  of  Columbia  University  and  the  New  York  Society. 
I  am  deeply  indebted  to  my  colleague,  Professor  John  Owen 
Beaty,  for  the  privilege  of  reading  his  forthcoming  John 
Esten  Cooke :  Virginian  and  for  other  information  concern- 
ing Cooke's  life  and  work.  I  wish  also  to  express  my  ap- 
preciation of  the  helpful  advice  given  me  by  Professors  W. 


6]  VIRGINIA  UFE  IN  FICTION 

P.  Trent,  A.  H.  Thorndike,  and  John  Erskine,  and,  above 
all,  by  Dr.  Carl  Van  Doren,  literary  editor  of  the  Nation, 
who  suggested  the  subject  to  me  and  directed  my  investiga- 
tion and  assisted  me  in  every  way  possible  .  Last  of  all,  I 
wish  to  acknowledge  my  indebtedness  to  my  wife  for  criti- 
cism and  assistance  of  almost  every  other  kind  without 
which  this  study  might  never  have  been  completed. 

JAY   B.  HuBiiKi.i, 
SOUTHERN  METHODIST  UNIVERSITY 

Dallas,  Texas 
May,  1922 


V1RC.FNI A  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [7 

CHAPTER  ONE 
INTRODUCTION 

As  indicated  by  the  title,  this  book  is  a  study  of  Virginia 
as  a  background  in  fiction.  Its  chief  purpose  is  to  show 
how  Virginia  settings  have  been  handled  by  various  writers 
of  fiction.  These  settings  vary  widely  in  time  and  in  locali- 
ty ;  for  the  history  of  Virginia  has  been  long  and  eventful, 
and  racial  and  geographical  influences  have  never  permitted 
the  social  life  of  the  state  to  become  uniform.  There  is  also 
great  diversity  in  the  writers  who  have  been  attracted  to 
Virginia  backgrounds.  The  authors  are  not  limited  to  those 
bom  in  the  state,  or  even  in  America;  and  they  represent  a 
considerable  variety  of  literary  aims. 

This  volume  is  necessarily  also  to  some  extent  a  history 
of  Virginia  social  life;  for,  as  Woodberry  has  said,  ''Any 
discussion  of  Virginia  matters  finally  turns  to  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  social  life,  which  was  the  pride  of  the  State  and 
its  chief  pleasure."  The  chronological  method  which  has 
been  employed  should  give  the  reader  a  fairly  accurate  ac- 
count of  Virginia's  development  from  an  aristocratic  col- 
ony into  a  democratic  commonwealth.  The  historical  picture, 
it  need  'hardly  be  said,  differs  markedly  from  that  usually 
found  in  fiction.  Apart  from  some  of  the  earlier  novelists, 
the  best  accounts  of  Virginia  life  are  to  be  found  in  the 
writings  of  Northern  and  European  travelers. 

In  the  way  of  local  color  and  historical  picturesqueness 
no  state  in  the  Union  has  more  to  offer  the  novelist  than 
Virginia.  Even  when  stripped  of  its  legendary  accretions, 
there  is  much  in  the  history  of  the  state  which  appeals  to  the 
imagination  of  the  writer  of  fiction.  Virginia  has  the  lost 
causes  and  the  vanished  social  order  which  are  so  dear  to 
historical  romance.  The  social  life  of  the  old  regime  still 
possesses,  even  when  accurately  portrayed,  as  it  seldom  is, 
a  picturesqueness  and  a  charm  which  are  all  the  more  at- 


8]  VIRGINIA  UFE  IN  FICTION 

tractive  perhaps  because  that  life  now  seems  so  un-Ameri- 
can. Until  after  the  Civil  War,  life  in  Virginia  was  in 
many  respects  semi-feudal;  for  economic  conditions  there 
had  perpetuated  and  strengthened  the  surviving  feudal 
characteristics  of  seventeenth  century  England.  Thus  Vir- 
ginia developed  a  sort  of  chivalric  regime  of  her  own,  which 
the  popular  imagination,  working  through  historians  and 
writers  of  fiction,  has  made  the  most  romantic  background 
in  America. 

In  American  historical  romance  ante-bellum  Virginia 
plays  somewhat  the  same  part  that  the  age  of  chivalry 
plays  in  British  poetry  and  fiction.  Virginia  life  was  full 
of  sharp  contrasts,  such  as  Scott  loved,  which  lend  them- 
selves better  to  the  novelist's  'hand  than  the  external  uni- 
formity of  modern  American  life.  The  influence  of  Scott, 
in  fact,  is  almost  everywhere  present  in  Virginia  fiction. 
Most  of  Scott's  character  types  are  easily  paralleled  in  Vir- 
ginia life.  The  aristocratic  planter  replaces  the  English 
baron  and' the  Scottish  laird;  the  indentured  servant  and 
the  negro  slave  take  the  place  of  the  vassal  and  the  serf; 
and  the  Indian  and  the  mountaineer  sometimes  assume  the 
role  of  the  outlaw  of  the  Scottish  Highlands.  It  was  Scott, 
too,  who  taught  the  American  novelists  to  see  the  value  of 
such  contrasting  types  as  the  Puritan  and  the  Cavalier,  the/\ 
poor  white  and  the  planter,  the  democratic  mountaineer  and 
the  Tidewater  aristocrat.  In  fact,  Colonial  Virginia  is  es- 
sentially a  part  of  the  background  of  British  historical  ro- 
mance. It  is  easy  to  connect  Virginia  with  Elizabeth,  Shake- 
speare, Raleigh,  Drake,  the  Stuarts,  and  the  Cavaliers.  Vir- 
ginia history  abounds  in  events  which  were  picturesque 
even  before  they  were  retouched  by  the  romantic  hand  of 
tradition.  That  history  is  full  of  wars,  and  nothing  so  capti- 
vates the  romantic  imagination  as  "the  pomp  and  circum- 
stance of  glorious  war."  There  are  numerous  Indian  wars 
supplying  material  as  rich  as  that  which  Cooper  found  in 
upper  New  York.  There  is  the  Revolution,  which  came  to 
its  spectacular  close  under  a  Virginian  general  and  upon 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

Virginian  soil.  And,  richest  field  of  all,  there  is  the  Civil 
War,  the  most  decisive  battles  of  which  were  likewise  fought 
upon  Virginian  territory  and  under  Virginian  generals. 
Finally,  in  the  period  following  the  war,  novelists  have 
found  abundant  materials  in  the  rise  of  the  poor  white,  the 
fortunes  of  the  free  negro,  and,  above  all,  in  the  pathetic 
situation  of  the  ruined  aristocrat  struggling  bravely  to  pre- 
serve 'his  traditions  and  make  his  way  in  an  alien  civiliza- 
tion. 

The  rich  literary  backgrounds  of  Virginia  life  and  his- 
tory come  to  almost  every  novelist  already  obscured  by  tra- 
dition and  legend.  As  clearly  as  possible,  we  shall  endeavor 
to  trace  the  development  of  that  romantic  glamor  of  legend 
and  tradition  which  has  obscured  the  history  of  the  state  and 
influenced  the  whole  course  of  Virginia  fiction. 

"In  all  current  literature  tltere  is  nothing  more  remarka- 
ble than  the  way  in  which  writers  have  unconsciously  con- 
spired to  over-idealise  Virginia,"  says  Arthur  Granville 
Bradley,  a  shrewd  English  student  of  Virginia  life,  whose 
writings  have  been  persistently  neglected  by  native  his- 
torians. Although  the  Indian,  th'e  Puritan,  the  frontier 
scout,  the  California  miner,  and  the  Texas  cowboy  have  each 
a  role  in  fiction  and  in  popular  tradition  which  bears  little 
resemblance  to  historic  reality,  the  old  Virginia  gentleman 
is  more  of  a  legendary  figure  than  any  one  of  these.  The 
idealization  of  Virginia  comes  to  far  more  than  the  glorify- 
ing touch  of  an  old  soldier's  memory  or  the  natural  tendency 
of  the  romancer  to  cast  a  glamor  over  his  scenes  and  char- 
acters. The  Virginia  tradition  rests  upon  a  mass  of  legends 
piled  one  upon  the  other  like  the  cities  which  Schliemann 
unearthed  at  Troy.  This  tradition  ignores  the  greater  part 
of  the  white  population  and  even  important  geographical  di- 
visions of  the  state.  It  tells  of  a  half-fictitious  Golden  Age 
"befo  de  wah,"  of  a  colonial  age  of  well-nigh  mythical  Cav- 
aliers, and  of  a  Revolution  that  never  happened. 

In  making  a  chivalric  lord  of  the  Virginia  tobacco  planterTl 
legend  'has  obscured  the  greatest  charm  of  the  old  Virginia  / 


10]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

life,  its  homespun  simplicity.  The  planter  was  a  cultivated 
and  leisurely  farmer,  but  he  was  no  baron ;  he  was  not  even 
an  English  country  gentleman.  His  estate  of  two  or  three 
thousand  acres  was  no  principality,  and  his  rambling  wooden 
house  was  no  baronial  mansion.  His  luxury  consisted  in 
the  numerous  ragged  and  inefficient  servants  who  attended 
him  and  in  the  abundance  of  home-grown  provisions — wa- 
termelons, apple  cider,  mint  juleps,  country  ham,  roasting 
ears,  and  "snaps."  His  thriftless  agricultural  methods  kept 
him  almost  invariably  in  debt.  He  was  too  poor  and  too  re- 
mote from  towns  to  lead  the  wild  and  hilarious  life  which 
the  Abolitionist  ascribed  to  him.  His  life,  in  short,  was  a 
simple  and  monotonous  one,  varied  chiefly  by  the  presence 
of  guests  and  the  changes  w'hich  the  seasons  bring  upon 
the  farm. 

The  strangest  aspect  of  the  Virginia  legend  is  the  fact 
that,  in  fiction  and  popular  tradition,  North  as  well  as  South, 
V  the  small  planter  class  has  overshadowed  every  other  class 

except  the  poor  whites  and  the  slaves.  Of  the  vastly  more 
numerous  middle-class  farmers  we  hear  nothing  except  in 
recent  histories.  In  the  Virginia  tradition  there  are  no  sec- 
ond families — except  those  that  emigrated  to  North  Caro- 
'lina.  The  unromantic  census  reports,  however,  remind  us 
that  in  1860  there  were  in  the  entire  state  only  114  persons 
who  owned  as  many  as  100  slaves,  and  this  out  of  a  white 
.population  of  over  1,000,000.  There  were,  of  course,  some 
poor  and  even  landless  gentlemen,  but  probably  not  many. 
If  all  who  claim  descent  from  wealthy  old  Virginian 
families  are  to  be  believed,  these  114  families  were  the  most 
prolific  on  record. 

The  Virginia  of  legend  and  fiction  lies  east  of  the  Blue 
Ridge;  the  role  of  Western  Virginia  is  negligible.  Yet  life 
in  western  Virginia  was  not  less  picturesque.  Virginia 
mountaineers  are  of  the  same  stock  that  Charles  Egbert 
Craddock  and  John  Fox  discovered  in  Tennessee  and  Ken- 
tucky. The  explanation  of  this  neglect  is  that  ever  since 
the  time  of  Bacon's  Rebellion  in  1676  there  has  been  con- 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [  1 1 

stant  friction  between  east  and  west.  Lowlander  and  high-  f 
lander,  or  Tuckahoe  and  Cohee,  as  they  used  to  be  called, 
had  little  in  common.  The  Cohee,  of  Scotch-Irish  or  Ger- 
man descent,  was  a  small  farmer  who  owned  no  slaves  and 
hated  the  high-handed  slave-holder  of  the  lowlands.  He 
was,  as  Professor  F.  J.  Turner  first  pointed  out,  essentially 
a  Westerner  with  the  traditional  hostility  of  the  frontiers- 
man to  the  East.  The  western  element  has  played  a  small 
part  in  the  Virginia  tradition  because  it  was  the  lowland 
planter  who  perpetuated  the  traditions  and  wrote  the  his- 
tories of  the  Old  Dominion. 

Yet  it  was  the  western  element,  which  Virginia  tradition 
ignores,  that  brought  on  the  Revolution.  Patrick  Henry 
was  the  spokesman  of  this  frontier  democracy.  The  plan- 
ters fought  loyally  though  unwillingly  when  the  frontiers- 
men forced  them  into  the  war ;  but  the  aristocracy  fur- 
nished only  the  lesser  Virginia  statesmen,  the  Lees,  the 
Randolphs,  Bland,  Wythe,  and  Mason.  The  great  leaders 
without  exception  are  to  be  classed  with  the  west.  Neither 
Washington,  Henry,  Madison,  nor  Marshall  belonged  to  the 
great  planter  families ;  and  Jefferson,  though  related  to  the 
Randolphs,  lived  on  the  frontier  and,  like  Jackson  and  Lin- 
coln, learned  hiis  first  lessons  in  democracy  there.  Yet  the 
planters,  who  did  not  want  to  fight,  succeeded  in  imposing 
upon  the  world  for  a  century  the  myth  that  they  were  re- 
sponsible for  the  stand  which  Virginia  took.  Never  did 
legend  more  completely  reverse  historic  fact.  The  reason  is 
not  difficult  to  guess.  The  western  party  not  only  forced 
Virginia  into  the  war;  it  wrought  a  social  revolution  in  the 
life  of  the  state  by  disestablishing  the  Anglican  Church  and 
abolishing  the  laws  of  primogeniture  and  entail  which  had 
kept  intact  the  great  planter  estates.  This  party,  under  the  . 
leadership  of  Henry  and  Jefferson,  became  the  nucleus  of 
the  national  Democratic  Party,  which  even  today  is  not 
adored  by  men  of  wealth  and  position. 

If  we  are  to  understand  how  stratum  upon  stratum  of 
legend  has  been  gradually  formed  till  it  obscures  the  earlier 


12]  VIRGINIA  IJFK  IN  FICTION 

history  of  Virginia,  it  is  necessary  to  digress  for  a  momem 
to  note  what  was  till  a  few  years  ago  an  almost  universal 
p  Southern  trait.  The  Virginian,  even  more  than  other 
Southerners,  was  a  deteriorationist.  He  believed  in  the  in- 
evitable superiority  of  the  former  times.  This  typically 
Virginian  view  was  well  expressed  by  George  W.  Bagby  in 
his  lecture,  The  Old  Virginia  Gentleman.  "I  can  but  think/' 
said  he,  "that,  since  the  Colonial  and  Revolutionary  days, 
each  generation  has  shown  a  slight  falling  away  from  thos^ 
grand  models  of  men  and  women  who  really  existed  in  Vir- 
ginia, but  whom  we  have  come  to  look  upon  almost  as 
myths."  Even  at  this  late  day,  the  older  Virginian  farmers 
will  tell  you  that  since  the  war  everything  has  deteriorated — 
crops,  farmhands,  climate,  manners,  morals — everything. 
One  farmer  whom  I  know  insists  in  all  seriousness  that  the 
sap  in  the  sugar-maple  is  not  so  sweet  as  it  was  before  the 
war.  Mark  Twain  tells  the  story  of  an  old  negro  woman 
who,  in  reply  to  a  New  Yorker's  praise  of  the  beautiful 
Southern  moon,  said,  "Ah,  bless  yo'  heart,  honey,  you  jes' 
ought  to  seen  dat  moon  befo'  de  waw !" 

It  was  in  the  years  following  the  Revolution  that  the  Vir- 
ginian became  the  backward-looking  glorifier  of  the  past.  In 
those  years  Virginia  sank  rapidly  in  population  and  import- 
ance from  first  to  fifth  among  the  states.  The  large  estates 
had  been  split  up  by  Jefferson's  laws;  and  many  of  the 
planters,  completely  ruined,  migrated  to  other  states,  car- 
rying their  proud  traditions  with  them.  The  divided  estates 
fell  into  the  hands  of  small  farmers  and  overseers.  The  few 
planters  who  remained  behind,  poor  and  despairing,  could 
not  help  contrasting  their  present  hard  lot  with  that  of  their 
wealthy  fathers.  "In  whose  hands  now,"  said  Henry  Clay 
in  1833,  "are  the  once  proud  seats  of  Westover,  Cerles,  May- 
cocks,  Shirly,  and  others  on  the  James  and  in  lower  Vir- 
ginia? They  have  passed  into  other  and  stranger  hands. 
Some  of  the  descendants  of  illustrious  parentage  have  gone 
to  the  far  West,  while  others,  lingering  behind  have  con- 
trasted their  present  condition  with  that  of  their  venerated 


VIRGINIA  UFE  IN  FICTION  [13 

ancestors.  They  behold  themselves  excluded  from  their  fa- 
thers' houses,  now  in  the  hands  of  those  who  were  once  their 
fathers'  overseers,  or  sinking  into  decay."  Times  were  hard ; 
the  price  of  tobacco  was  low ;  and  the  slaves  were  too 
numerous  to  be  profitable — if,  indeed,  they  had  ever  been. 
John  Randolph  prophesied  that  eventually  the  masters 
would  run  away  from  their  slaves  to  keep  from  having  to 
feed  and  clothe  them.  The  rich  lands  of  the  Tidewater  had 
been  worn  out  by  two  centuries  of  wasteful  cultivation, 
against  which  Washington  had  protested  in  vain.  What 
wonder  if  in  their  distress  the  ruined  aristocrats  idealized 
the  years  of  their  prosperity  and  power! 

In  the  thirties  the  South  experienced  a  profound  social  " 
and  political  change  which  has  seldom  been  noticed.  While 
the  North  and  the  West  were  in  many  ways  growing  more 
democratic,  Virginia  turned  her  back  squarely  upon  her  Rev- 
lutionary  leaders  and  began  to  build  up  an  aristocratic  social 
order  remarkably  like  that  which  Jefferson  had  overthrown. 
Although  universally  supposed  to  be  a  continuation  of  the 
colonial  aristocracy,  tihe  new  gentry  was,  as  a  whole, 
nothing  of  the  kind.  It  was  made  up  in  the  main  of  small 
farmers  and  overseers  who  had  bought  up  the  old  estates. 

The  underlying  economic  cause  of  this  social  change  in 
Virginia  was  that  slavery,  which  for  half  a  century  had  \ 
been  a  moribund  institution,  without  apologists,  had  once 
more  become  profitable.  Cotton  was  now  enthroned  in  the 
lower  South,  and  the  high  prices  paid  in  the  Gulf  states 
made  Virginia's  surplus  slaves  a  means  of  restoring  to  the 
Old  Dominion  a  portion  of  her  colonial  prosperity.  At  the 
same  time  the  rise  of  the  Northern  Abolitionists  and  the 
Southampton  Insurrection,  popularly  attributed  to  their 
agency,  made  it  impossible  for  the  eastern  Virginian  to  op- 
pose slavery.  Virginia's  new  political  leaders  followed  Cal- 
houn,  who  was  building  up  a  social  and  political  philosophy 
with  slavery  as"  its  corner-stone.  In  fact,  two  Virginians, 
Dew  and  Fitzhugh,  were  among  the  ablest  exponents  of  this 
undemocratic  philosophy.  Reaction,  we  may  add,  was  also 


14]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

the  fashion  in  Europe ;  men  were  losing  faith  in  democracy. 
In  Virginia  many  of  the  small  farmers  who  had  precipi- 
tated the  state  into  the  Revolution  were  now  compelled 
either  to  leave  the  state  or  to  accept  a  social  station  subordi- 
nate to  that  of  the  new  planter  aristocracy. 
vf  It  is  significant  that  the  phrase  "Southen  chivalry"  first 
*"  appeared  about  1835.  Like  the  newly  rich  everywhere,  the 
new  aristocracy  wanted  ancestors.  It  was  inevitable  that 
they  should  claim  to  be  a  continuation  of  the  almost  extinct 
colonial  gentry.  In  glorifying  their  imaginary  ancestors, 
the  new  aristocrats  created  a  picture  of  Colonial  and  Re- 
'  volutionary  Virginia  which  is  largely  legendary.  Caruthers 
and  Cooke,  who  pictured  the  earlier  epochs  in  their  melo- 
dramatic romances,  gave  the  first  families  credit  for  what 
the  frontiersmen  had  done.  The  new  aristocracy  forgot  the 
plebeian  followers  of  Henry  and  Jefferson ;  and  though  they 
condemned  Jefferson's  democracy  as  "glittering  fallacies," 
they  even  claimed  Jefferson  himself  as  one  of  their  own 
number. 

The  extraordinary  development  of-  the  Cavalier  myth  is 
significant  of  the  change  which  came  over  the  South  in  the 
thirties.  In  the  histories  of  Virginia  the  estimates  of  the 
number  of  Cavaliers  who  settled  in  Virginia  steadily  in- 
crease while  the  number  of  indentured  servants  as  steadily 
declines.  Caruthers's  romance,  The  Cavaliers  of  Virginia, 
added  wings  to  the  legend.  The  fact  that  the  term  Cavalier 
had  indicated  only  a  political  and  not  a  social  class  was  rap- 
idly forgotten.  All  Cavaliers  were  now  supposed  to  have 
been  gentlemen.  In  the  final  stage  all  Virginians  and  all 
other  Southerners  became  descendants  of  the  British  nobil- 
ity !  In  1860  Robert  Toombs,  of  Georgia,  made  his  famous 
boast,  "We  [of  the  South]  are  a  race  of  gentlemen."  The 
enormous  spread  of  the  Cavalier  myth,  in  fact,  seems  in 
large  part  responsible  for  English  and  French  sympathy  with 
the  cause  of  the  Confederacy. 

It  was  not  the  Southerner  alone,  however,  who  made  a 
lord  of  the  Virginia  planter.  Stoutly  as  the  Abolitionists 


VIRGINIA  UFE  IN  FICTION  [15 

denied  the  social  superiority  of  the  Virginian's  origin,  they 
too  made  a  lord  of  the  slave-owner.  Hating  him  and 
slavery,  they  pictured  him  as  a  feudal  tyrant  ruling  his 
thousands  with  a  rod  of  iron.  They  portrayed  him  as  cruel, 
proud,  idle,  luxurious,  dissipated.  They  pointed  to  the  poor 
whites  as  proof  of  the  degrading  influence  of  slavery  upon 
the  white  man ;  but  they  said  nolhing  of  the  much  more 
numerous  middle-class  farmers  who  also  held  slaves.  Now- 
adays when  trained  reporters  are  scouring  the  four  quarters 
of  the  earth  to  supply  an  eager  public  with  first-hand  news 
of  every  event,  it  seems  incredible  that  the  Abolitionists,  al- 
most to  a  man,  knew  nothing  of  slavery  from  personal  ob- 
servation. Seldom  has  the  world  seen  men  more  credulous 
of  the  things  they  wished  to  believe  and  more  blind  to  what 
they  did  not  wish  to  see.  Apart  from  William  Ellery 
Channing,  practically  none  of  the  Abolitionists  had  ever  so- 
journed in  the  South ;  and  it  was  Channing  who,  while  tutor 
in  the  Randolph  family  in  Richmond,  wrote  of  the  Virginia 
people : 

"I  blush  for  my  own  people  when  I  compare  the  selfish 
prudence  of  a  Yankee  with  the  generous  confidence  of  a 

Virginian There  is  one  single  trait  which  attaches  me 

to  the  people  I  live  with,  more  than  all  the  virtues  of  New 
England.  They  love  money  less  than  we  do.  They  are 
more  disinterested.  Their  patriotism  is  not  tied  to  their 
purse-strings.  Could  I  only  take  away  from  the  Virginians 
their  sensuality  and  their  slaves,  I  should  think  them  the 
greatest  people  in  the  world." 

In  a  memorable  comparison  between  Southern  and  North- 
ern gentlemen,  James  Ford  Rhodes  has  said : 

"The  Southern  gentleman  was  to  the  manner  born.  In 
society  and  conversation  he  appeared  to  the  best  advantage. 
He  had  self-assurance,  'an  easy  bearing,  and  to  women  a 
chivalrous  courtesy;  he  was  'stately  but  condescending, 
haughty  but  jovial.'  Underneath  all  were  physical  courage,  a 
habit  of  command,  a  keen  sense  of  honor,  and  a  generous 
disposition If  we  reckon  by  numbers,  there  were 


16]  VIRGINIA  LIFE;  IN  FICTION 

certainly  more  well-bred  people  at  the  North  than  at  the 
South ;  but  when  we  compare  the  cream  of  society  in  both 
sections,  the  palm  must  be  awarded  to  the  slave-holding  com- 
munity. The  testimony  of  English  gentlemen  and  ladies, 
few  of  whom  have  any  sympathy  with  slavery,  is  almost 

unanimous  in  this  respect The  Northern  men 

seemed  frequently  overweighted  with  business  cares,  and, 
except  on  the  subjects  of  trade,  politics,  and  the  material 
growth  of  the  country,  were  not  good  talkers.  The  mer- 
chant or  manufacturer  of  Boston,  New  York,  or  Philadel- 
phia was  a  busy  man ;  he  had  not  the  leisure  of  his  South- 
ern brother  to  cultivate  the  amenities  of  life,  and  he  lacked 
that  abandon  of  manners  which  Englishmen  found  so 
charming  in  the  slave-holding  lords.  This  superiority  of 
the  best  Southern  society  undoubtedly  grew  out  of  the  social 
system  of  which  slavery  was  the  basis." 

To  understand  how  the  years  preceding  the  Civil  War 
came  to  be  regarded  as  a  Golden  Age,  Arcadian  and  per- 
fect, one  must  note  how  later  events  have  colored  the  Vir- 
ginian's attitude  toward  the  past.  After  fighting  for  that 
old  regime  during  four  desperate  years  as  men  have  seldom 
fought  for  any  cause,  good  or  bad,  he  had  seen  his  civili- 
zation overthrown,  relegated  to  the  past  which  holds  the 
kingdoms  of  Caesar  and  Charlemagne.  No  wonder  he 
loved  it.  But  the  worst  had  not  yet  come.  After  Appo- 
matox  he  was  somewhat  reconciled  to  the  loss  of  his  slaves; 
but  he  was  not  prepared  for  Reconstruction,  which  seemed 
to  him  an  attempt  to  k'Yankee-ize"  him  in  mind  and  soul. 
Reconstruction  appeared  to  him  an  attempt  to  force  him 
to  give  up  not  only  his  ancient  mode  of  living  but  even  his 
whole  view  of  life.  No  wonder  he  resisted  desperately  and, 
unable  to  save  anything  else  which  belonged  to  the  past, 
cherished  its  memory  as  a  sacred  thing. 

To  the  bankrupt  planter  all  seemed  chaos;  and,  indeed, 
there  was  enough  to  make  him  despair.  He  knew  nothing 
about  handling  free  labor ;  and,  with  the  Union  League  and 
the  Freedman's  Bureau  to  interfere  with  his  plans,  negro 


VIRGINIA  LIFK  IN  FICTION  [17 

labor  was  more  inefficient  than  ever  before.  The  planter's 
lands,  even  in  Piedmont,  were  worn  out;  and  he  knew 
nothing  of  rotation  of  crops  or  other  modern  methods  of 
restoring  the  soil.  Almost  to  a  man,  the  planters  fled  one 
by  one  to  the  cities,  ruined.  The  old  social  order  was  gone, 
and  the  old  homes  stood  untenanted,  going  to  ruin  and  de- 
cay. What  wonder  if  in  poverty  and  bitterness  the  plan- 
ter pined  for  the  good  old  days  before  the  war !  Even  the 
negroes  themselves  idealized  the  past,  so  that  Page  could 
with  perfect  appropriateness-  put  into  their  mouths  his  idyllic 
pictures  of  life  in  the  old  regime. 

The  Civil  War  seemed  to  the  broken  planter  the  one 
great  epic  event  in  history.  The  great  battles  had  been 
fought  under  Virginian  generals  and  on  Virginian  soil.  To 
the  Virginian  the  war  had  been  a  second  and  more  glorious 
struggle  for  independence.  Reconstruction  made  the  Lost 
Cause  in  his  eyes  a  sacred  thing.  Slavery  he  would  admit 
was  wrong,  but  secession  never.  "The  collapse  of  the  old 
order,"  wrote  Henry  James  after  a  visit  to  Richmond,  "-the 
humiliation  of  defeat,  the  bereavement  and  bankruptcy  in- 
volved, represented,  with  its  obscure  miseries  and  tragedies, 
the  social  revolution  the  most  unrecorded  and  undepicted, 
in  proportion  to  its  magnitude,  that  ever  was;  so  that  this 
reversion  of  the  starved  spirit  to  the  things  of  the  heroic 
age,  the  four  epic  years,  is  a  definite  soothing  salve." 

In  the  chaotic  confusion  of  Reconstruction  Virginia  old 
social  lines  began  to  be  rubbed  out,  and  new  lines  of  cleav- 
age were  forming.  While  so  many  of  the  planters  were 
finding  it  impossible  to  adjust  themselves  to  the  new  eco- 
nomic order,  the  middle-class  farmers,  performing  their 
own  labor,  managed  to  hold  their  own  and  often  to  rise  to 
wealth  and  power.  In  politics  and  in  business  also  new 
men  came  to  the  front.  The  new  men,  constituting  an  aris- 
tocracy based  on  wealth,  wanted  ancestors,  for  wealth  alone 
did  not  give  the  best  of  social  standing.  In  this  confused 
period  of  transition  it  was  easy  to  magnify  one's  ancestry. 
Nearly  all  the  genuine  aristocrats  were  ruined,  and  many 


18]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

had  gone  to  other  states.  Few  had  now  the  wealth  to  sup- 
port their  claims  to  good  birth.  By  1880  few  knew  with 
any  certainty  who  had  belonged  to  the  gentry  in  the  pre- 
war days.  In  fact,  it  was  then,  and  is  now,  frequently  im- 
possible to  distinguish  the  sons  of  gentlemen  from  the  sons 
of  plebeians.  Even  the  poor  whites,  imitating  their  social 
superiors,  began  to  claim  descent  from  fine  old  Virginia 
families  ruined  by  the  war. 

Here,  if  an  apparent  digression  may  be  permitted,  we 
shall  note  the  part  of  the  Virginian  emigrant  in  establishing 
the  Virginia  tradition  in  the  nation  at  large.  The  two  periods 
of  decay  which  followed  the  Revolution  and  the  Civil  War 
led  to  wholesale  emigration  to  the  West,  the  lower  South, 
and,  in  the  later  period,  to  the  cities  of  the  North.  The 
ruined  gentry  migrated  in  larger  numbers  than  any  other 
class;  and  they  carried  their  traditions  with  them,  often 
their  only  asset.  Naturally  enough,  the  emigrant  Virginian 
became  more  intensely  Virginian  than  he  had  been  at  home. 
In  proportion  to  his  distance  from  the  mother  state,  the 
glory  of  the  emigrant's  name  increased;  for  F.  F.  V.  was 
a  badge  of  distinction  honored  all  over,  the  country.  The 
novels  of  Mark  Twain  and  Edward  Eggleston,  both  West- 
erners of  Virginian  ancestry,  abound  in  evidence  of  this 
fact.  Not  all  emigrants,  to  be  sure,  were  professional  Vir- 
ginians ;  but  with  a  credulous  audience  it  was  hard  for  the 
Virginian  not  to  romance  about  his  ancestry. 

The  migratory  movement  attracted  chiefly  the  dissatis- 
fied and  the  aggressive.  As  in  modern  England,  it  was  the 
conservative  element  which  remained  behind  to  give  its  tone 
to  institutions  and  social  life.  And  it  is  always  the  conserv- 
ative who  looks  to  the  past,  distrusting  innovation,  cher- 
ishing traditions,  and  building  legends. 

The  idealization  of  Virginia  is  the  work  of  time  and  the 
imagination  of  a  people.  It  is  not  the  creation  of  the  novel- 
ist's brain;  for  the  novelist  can  only  use  it  as  it  comes  to 
him,  giving  it  literary  expression.  Bret  Harte's  romantic 
pictures  of  the  forty-niners  did  not  appear  until  the  unique 


VIRGINIA  UFE  IN  FICTION  [  19 

life  he  described  had  practically  ceased  to  exist.  Harte 
himself  confessed  that  it  was  years  before  that  life  took  on 
in  his  imagination  the  perspective  necessary  to  successful 
treatment  in  fiction.  Most  of  Hawthorne's  work  was  done 
for  him  before  he  was  born.  For  over  two  centuries  the  New 
England  imagination  had  been  creating  a  legendary  portrait 
of  the  Puritans  to  which  he  had  only  to  give  literary  ex- 
pression. Uncas  would  have  seemed  incredible  to  a  genera- 
tion of  New  Yorkers  who  lived  in  hourly  peril  of  the  tom- 
ahawk and  the  scalping  knife ;  but  once  the  Indian  was  gone, 
it  was  easy  to  idealize  him,  to  remember  his  virtues  and 
forget  his  vices.  It  has  been  often  asserted  that  America 
has  no  legends.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  have  many  though 
none  that  have  been  so  highly  developed  as  the  great  liter- 
ary legends  of  Europe.  The  Puritan,  the  Indian,  the  fron- 
tiersman, and  the  Virginia  planter  have  all  become  leg- 
endary. Until  they  did  so,  they  could  not  be  adequately 
treated  in  poetry  or  romantic  fiction.  At  least,  so  it  seemed 
to  our  earlier  novelists  following  the  Scott  tradition.  In 
the  case  of  Virginia,  the  legend  is  older  and  less  true  to 
historic  fact ;  but  it  has  undoubtedly  greatly  helped  to  make 
Virginia  the  most  romantic  state  in  the  Union.  Yet  as  one 
studies  the  history  of  the  state,  the  reality  often  appears 
more  interesting  and  more  human  than  the  traditional  story ; 
and  one  wishes  that  John  Esten  Cooke  and  other  earlier 
novelists  had  been  less  blind  to  the  picturesqueness  of  the 
Virginia  of  their  own  time. 

THE  NOVELISTS  OF  VIRGINIA  LIFE 

It  has  seemed  best  in  this  study  to  group  works  of  fiction 
according  to  the  historical  period  with  which  they  deal 
rather  than  in  the  order  in  which  they  were  written.  Since 
this  method  presupposes  on  the  part  of  the  reader  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  groups  into  which  the  novelists  fall,  it  has 
seemed  advisable  to  insert  here  a  brief  discussion  of  the 
chief  novelists  of  Virginia  life  and  thus  to  give  some  ac- 
count of  the  development  of  Virginia  fiction. 


20]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

As  we  shall  see  in  the  following  chapter,  Virginia  plays 
a  minor  part  in  Elizabethan  literature.*  Drayton  and 
Daniel,  among  others,  sing  of  the  glories  of  the  New  World 
and  of  their  hope  of  a  great  English  empire  in  Virginia. 
Drayton's  Ode  to  the  Virginian  Voyage,  which  Fiske  terms 
"a  poet  laureate's  farewell  blessing,"  is  well  known.  Daniel 
saw  in  Virginia  a  glorious  future  for  his  native  tongue : 

And  who,  in  time,  knows  whither  we  may  vent 

The  treasure  of  our  tongue,  to  what  strange  shores 

This  gain  of  our  best  glory  shall  be  sent, 

T'  enrich  unknowing  nations  with  our  stores? 

What  worlds  in  th'  yet  unformed  Occident 

May  come  refin'd  with  th'  accents  that  are  ours? 

Elizabethan  dramatists,  however,  ridicule  the  whole  col- 
onial enterprise  on  account  of  the  character  of  the  early 
emigrants  and  the  methods  used  to  induce  them  to  go  to 
Virginia.  In  The  City  Madam  of  Massinger  a  villain  pro- 
poses to  send  his  nieces  and  sister-in-law  to  Virginia.  They 
protest : 

Lady  Frugal.  How!   Virginia! 

High  Heaven  forbid!    Remember,  sir,  I  beseech  you, 
What  creatures  are  shipped  thither. 

Anne.  Condemned  wretches, 
Forfeited  to  the  law. 

Mary.  Strumpets  and  bawds, 
For  the  abomination  of  their  life, 
Spewed  out  of  their  own  country. 

Eastzvard  Hoe  (1605)  by  Jonson,  Chapman,  and  Mars- 
ton,  brilliantly  satirizes  the  methods  used  to  foster  emigra- 
tion to  the  colony. 

This  unromantic  view  of  Virginia  became  the  traditional 
one  in  early  English  fiction.  To  the  Elizabethan  dramatists, 
Mrs.  Aphra  Behn,  and  Defoe  Virginia  was  the  ihaven  of  the 
criminal  and  the  indentured  servant.  The  Virginia  tradi- 
tion is  the  antithesis  of  all  this.  Caruthers,  Cooke,  and 
Mary  Johnston  describe  the  Virginia  of  the  Cavaliers. 

In  Defoe's  Moll  Flanders  and  Colonel  Jacque,  both  pub- 
lished in  1722,  Virginia  is  represented  as  the  ideal  refuge 

*See  also  C.  M.  Gayley:  Shakespeare  and  the  Founders  of 
Liberty  in  America. 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [21 

for  the  vagrant,  the  pauper,  and  the  jailbird.  Colonel 
Jacque  gives  an  excellent  illustration  of  the  possibility  that 
a  criminal  might  rehabilitate  himself  in  Virginia.  In  three 
years  Jack  has  earned  his  freedom  and  a  plantation  of  his 
own.  Defoe's  knowledge  of  Virginia  geography  and  the 
legal  status  of  the  indentured  servant  is  surprisingly  accu- 
rate. 

On  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  Virginia  fiction  may  be  said 
to  begin  with  the  English  traveler,  John  Davis,  who  came 
to  America  in  1798  with  the  intention  of  exploiting  our 
literary  resources.  In  his  Travels  (1803),  he  published 
the  first  fictitious  version  of  the  Pocahontas  story,  which 
he  twice  expanded  in  later  editions.  In  1808  James  Nelson 
Barker  published  The  Indian  Princess,  the  first  American 
treatment  of  the  story.  George  Washington  Parke  Custis's 
Pocahontas  (1830),  was  the  first  dramatic  version  to  be 
written  by  a  Virginian.  The  amazing*  vitality  of  the  Smith- 
Pocahontas  story  is  probably  due  to  a  certain  epic  quality 
combined  with  the  sentimental  appeal  of  a  tragic  love  story. 

The  first  American  novelist  to  introduce  Virginian  char- 
acters in  fiction  was  Fenimore  Cooper.  Almost  half  of  the 
leading  chraacters  in  The  Spy  (1821)  are  Virginians;  and,  \ 
though  none  of  the  scenes  are  laid  on  Virginian  soil,  the 
novel  shows  that  the  Virginia  character  was  early  recognized 
as  distinctly  different  from  that  of  the  Northern  States.  The 
dashing  Captain  Jack  Lawton  is  the  most  lifelike  cavalier 
in  Virginia  fiction. 

In  1824  appeared  the  first  novels  which  attempt  to  picture 
Virginia  life.  These  are  the  anonymous  Tales  of  an  Ameri- 
can Landlord  and  The  Valley  of  Shenandoah,  by  George  \ 
Tucker.  The  first  is  a  very  dreary  religious  novel,  unim- 
portant except  that  it  betrays  the  first  slight  influence  of 
Scott,  who  seems  the  godfather  of  so  many  later  Virginian 
novelists.  The  Valley  of  Shenandoah,  however,  is  a  real- 
istic story  of  considerable  merit.  It  might  be  called  the 
Virginia  Clarissa  Harlowe,  and  it  contains  a  faithful,  though 
not  very  readable,  portrait  of  a  decaying  planter  family.  It 


22]  VIRGINIA  LIFE:  IN  FICTION 

abounds  in  elaborate  and  accurate  pictures  of  Virginia  life 
on  both  sides  of  the  Blue  Ridge.  Had  the  author  been  able 
to  incorporate  his  picture  of  Virginia  life  in  a  better  narra- 
tive, he  might  have  written  a  novel  of  much  literary  merit. 

In  1832  appeared  the  Virginia  classic,  Swallow  Barn,  theX 
most  accurate  account  of  ante-bellum  Virginia  life.  Ken- 
nedy's equipment  for  writing  such  a  book  was  ideal,  for 
he  had  not  only  an  intimate  knowledge  of  Virginia  life  but 
also  the  perspective  of  the  outside  world.  Though  Kennedy 
shared  to  a  certain  extent  the  Virginian  disposition  to 
idealize  the  past,  his  literary  models  fortunately  were  not 
Scott  but  Irving  and  Addison.  Every  one  who  has  writ- 
ten about  Kennedy  has  noted  the  striking  resemblance  be- 
tween Swallow  Barn  and  Bracebridge  Hall.  The  charm  of 
Virginia  life  for  Kennedy  consisted  in  "The  mellow,  bland 
and  sunny  luxuriance  of  her  old-time  society — its  good  fel- 
lowship, its  hearty  and  constitutional  companionableness,  the 
thriftless  gayety  of  the  people,  their  dogged  but  amiable  in- 
vincibility of  opinion,  and  that  overflowing  hospitality 
which  knew  no  ebb."  The  chief  defect  of  the  story  as  a 
picture  of  Virginia  life  lies  in  the  fact  that,  like  nearly  all 
other  novels,  it  almost  entirely  ignores  all  but  the  higher  so- 
cial class. 

It  will  be  noted  that  up  to  this  time,  and  even  much  later, 
Virginians  were  comparatively  slow  to  exploit  the  literary 
resources  of  their  state.*  Until  after  the  Civil  War,  if  we 
except  the  two  Tuckers,  Caruthers,  and  Cooke,  the  more 
important  novels  were  written  by  sympathetic  outsiders, 
either  Englishmen,  like  Thackeray  and  G.  P.  R.  James,  or 

*  There  was,  however,  more  literary  activity  in  the  South  in 
the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  than  has  been  gener- 
ally recognized.  A  bibliographical  study  which  the  writer  made 
several  years  ago  shows  that  between  1800  and  1835  there  were 
approximately  1000  publications  by  Southern  authors.  Of  these, 
only  217  belong  to  poetry,  drama,  and  fiction.  There  were  139 
volumes  of  verse,  29  of  them  by  anonymous  authors ;  44  works  of 
fiction;  and  34  dramatic  publications*.  By  far  the  greater  num- 
ber of  authors  published  only  one  volume.  From  8  to  9  per  cent, 
of  these  publications  were  by  women  writers. 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [23 

Americans  with  Virginia  connections,  like  Kennedy  and 
Paulding,  who  lived  in  other  states.  "It  is  curious  to  ob- 
serve/' says  Woodberry,  "that  what  the  South  afforded  to 
general  literature,  in  the  main,  was  given  into  the  hands  of 
strangers." 

In  1834  Dr.  William  Alexander  Caruthers,  the  first  in- 
fluential native  writer  of  fiction,  published  his  first  novel, 
The  Kentuckian  in  New  York.  Much  more  important,  how- 
ever, are  his  The  Cavaliers  of  Virginia  (1834-5)  and  The 
Knights  of  the  Horse-Shoe  (1845).  Caruthers  was  a  Vir- 
ginian of  the  Virginians.  Like  Cooke,  who  may  be  regard- 
ed as  his  successor,  he- was  a  disciple  of  Scott  and  he  tried 
to  do  for  his  native  state  what  Scott  had  done  for  English 
and  Scottish  history.  His  are  the  first  important  novels 
of  Colonial  Virginia.  The  picture  which  he  gives  of  Vir- 
ginia life  is  much  more  highly  colored  than  that  of  his  pre- 
decessors. Like  Cooke,  though  able  to  write  "excellent  nar- 
rative when  he  would,  he  was  too  fond  of  the  outworn  ele- 
ments of  European  romance  which  have  little  counterpart 
in  Virginia  life.  Caruthers  was  less  successful  than  either 
Cooper  or  Simms  in  adapting  Scott*s  character  types  and 
plots  to  his  American  setting.  His  Cavalier  gentlemen  and 
ladies  serve  well  enough  in  place  of  their  British  proto- 
types, but  it  is  not  easy  'to  see  why  he  should  mar  his  pic- 
ture of  Virginia  life  with  absurd  mysteries  and  melodram- 
atic villains,  or  distort  history  as  unblushingly  as  John 
Smith  had  done. 

The  decade  (1830-40)  in  which  Caruthers  began  to 
write  marks  an  important  change  in  Virginia's  attitude 
toward  the  past.  It  was  then,  as  we  have  pointed  out,  that 
she  turned  her  back  upon  her  great  Revolutionary  states- 
men, who  had  opposed  slavery,  and  began  to  rebuild  an  aris- 
tocratic social  order  like  that  which  Jefferson  had  over- 
thrown. Naturally,  the  later  Virginia  planters  began  to 
exalt  their  supposed  Cavalier  ancestors,  and  to  create  an  im^ 
aginary  Colonial  Virginia  which  had  little  basis  in  reality. 
From  the  time  of  Caruthers  up  to  the  close  of  the  century, 


24]  VIRGINIA  LIFE)  IN  FICTION 

with  a  few  notable  exceptions  such  as  Beverley  Tucker's 
The  Partisan  Leader  (1836),  Virginia  novelists  were  in- 
terested in  the  past  rather  than  in  the  present. 

The  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  which  was  founded  in 
1834  and  which  lived  on  somehow  until  1864,  gave  to  Vir- 
ginia writers  an  opportunity  which  they  were  somewhat  slow 
to  take  advantage  of.  Under  Poe  it  became  widely  known, 
but  he  found  little  support  in  the  writers  of  his  own  state. 
Poe  himself,  the  greatest  writer  to  whom  Virginia  has  a 
claim,  mentions  the  state  of  his  adoption  in  only  two  of  his 
stories,  A  Tale  of  the  Ragged  Mountains  and  The  Prema- 
ture Burial.  In  the  former,  according  to  Professor  Bliss 
Perry,  Poe  borrows  from  Macaulay  his  description  of  the 
mountains  which  he  had  seen  every  day  for  a  year  while  a 
student  at  the  University  of  Virginia. 

Various  causes  have  been  assigned  for  the  comparative 
lack  of  literary  activity  in  the  Old  South;  among  others, 
the  scattered  population,  ithe  absence  of  large  cities,  and  the 
almost  universal  desire  for  political  distinction.  The  one 
basic  cause,  it  seems  clear  today,  was  slavery.  With  all  the 
handicaps  usually  assigned,  but  without  slavery  and  the 
plantation  system  built  upon  it,  the  new  Virginia  has  pro- 
duced a  body  of  literature  which  compares  favorably  with 
the  achievement,  in  the  same  period,  of  any  other  state  in 
die  Union.  Virginia  hardly  had  a  literature  until  the  rise 
of  the  anti-slavery  agitators.  After  1835  there  could  be  lit- 
tie  vital  literary  expression  in  the  face  of  a  public  opinion 
which  began  more  and  more  to  insist  that  no  one  should 
speak  of  the  fundamental  basis  of  society  except  in  terms 
of  approval.  And  in  Virginia  few  things,  not  connected  in 
some  way  with  slavery,  were  worth  writing  about.  It  is 
significant  that  the  only  description  of  a  slave  sale  in  Vir- 
ginia fiction  occurs  in  The  Valley  of  Shenandoah,  published 
in  1824.  It  is  no  wonder  that  Poe  created  an  immoral  world 
of  his  own  and  tihat  Caruthers  and  Cooke  turned  to  the  past 

"This  point  is  discussed  more  fully  in  my  article,  On  "South- 
ern Literature,"  The  Texas  Review,  October,  1921. 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [25 

(7 

rather  than  write  of  the  picturesque  present  which  they  knew  \ 
and  which  Page  was  to  make  famous.* 

The  "wordy,  windy,  flowery  'eloquence,'  romanticism, 
sentimentality"  which  Mark  Twain  found  surviving  in 
Southern  writers  after  the  Civil  War,  he  attributes  to  the  in- 
fluence of  Scott,  whom  ihe  also  blames,  by  the  way,  for  the 
Civil  War  itself.  In  Chapter  XLVI  of  his  Life'  on  the  Missis- 
sippi he  says :  "It  was  Sir  Walter  that  made  every  gentleman 
in  the  South  a  Major  or  a  Colonel,  or  a  General  or  a  Judge, 
before  the  war ;  and  it  was  he,  also,  that  made  these  gentle- 
men value  their  bogus  decorations/'  In  A  Virginian  Vil- 
lage E.  S.  Nadal,  who  was  born  in  Virginia,  says :  "The 
Southern  writers,  from  being  unable  to  be  veracious  upon 
one  subject,  seemed  to  lose  the  power  of  veracity  regarding 
all  subjects.  .  .  .  The  Southern  planter  was  an  English 
squire.  They  made  him  a  feeble  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley, 
and  his  farm  or  plantation  a  rather  shabby  English  manor 
house."  "Everything,"  he  continues,  "was  exaggerated.  All 
their  geese  became  swans  ....  They  represented  every- 
thing as  different  from  what  it  was.  They  did  not  seem  to 
be  able  to  describe  even  natural  objects  correctly." 

In  the  fifties  two  English  novelists,  G.  P.  R.  James  and 
Thackeray,  each  used  Virginia  as  a  background  in  a  novel. 
Both  James  and  Thackeray  pictured  Virginia  life  most 
sympathetically,  but  neither  fell  to  any  great  extent  under 
the  influence  of  the  Virginia  .tradition  in  fiction,  now  well 
established.  The  Old  Dominion  (1856),  written  after 
James  had  been  consul  at  Norfolk,  gives  a  very  readable 
and  accurate  picture  of  Virginia  planter  life.  In  the  fol- 
lowing year  Thackeray  began  the  serial  publication  of  The 
Virginians  (1857-9).  Thackeray  saw  in  the  old  English 
simplicity  of  Virginia  life  an  appropriate  foil  to  the  corrupt 
life  of  the  upper  classes  in  eighteenth  century  England. 
Thackeray's  novel  gave  Virginia  its  place  as  a  favorite  set- 
ting in  American  romantic  fiction.  In  1863  H.  T.  Tucker- 
man  could  write,  "Except  New  England,  no  portion  of  our 
country  has  been  more  faithfully  illustrated  as  to  its  seen- 


26]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

ery,  domestic  life,  and  social  traits,  by  popular  literature, 
than  Virginia." 

John  Esten  Cooke*,  whose  first  novel,  antedating  James 
and  Thackeray,  was  published  in  1854,  is  the  connecting  link 
between  the  early  and  the  later  Virginian  novelists,  and  un- 
questionably the  most  influential  of  them-  all.  "My  aim," 
said  Cooke,  "has  been  to  paint  the  Virginia  phase  of  Am- 
erican society,  to  do  for  the  Old  Dominion  what  Cooper 
has  done  for  the  Indians,  Simms  for  the  Revolutionary 
drama  in  South  Carolina,  Irving  for  the  Dutch  Knicker- 
bockers, and  Hawthorne  for  the  Puritan  life  of  New  Eng- 
jland."  In  The  Virginia  Comedians  (1854)  he  wrote  not 
only  his  best  novel  but  the  best  novel  written  by  a  Virginian 
before  the  Civil  War.  Its  setting  is  one  which  Cooke  has 
made  unmistakably  his  own,  the  Virginia  of  the  years  imme- 
diately preceding  the  Revolution.  To  Cooke  the  Revolu- 
tion was  the  great  epic  event  of  American  history,  and  the 
years  immediately  preceding  it  were  the  Golden  Age.  In 
his  double  role  of  romancer  and  historian,  he  has  done  more 
than  any  other  to  popularize  the  legendary  view  of  Revolu- 
tionary Virginia.  His  intimate  knowledge  of  historical  de- 
tails did  not  correct  his  view  of  colonial  life,  but  only  served 
to  make  his  picture  of  it  seem  more  real  to  those  who  read 
him.  Not  only  lhas  he  impressed  his  conception  of  colonial 
life  upon  untrained  historians  like  Page  and  novelists  like 
Mary  Johnston  and  Hallie  Ermine  Rives;  he  has  even  in- 
fluenced so  well  trained  a  historian  as  John  Fiske,  who  in 
his  Old  Virginia  and  Her  Neighbors  betrays  the  influence 
of  Cooke's  Virginia:  A  History  of  the  People  (1883). 

The  Civil  War  interrupted  Cooke's  promising  literary 
career.  After  its  close  he  made  some  use  of  his  experiences 
as  a  soldier  in  Surry  of  Eaglets-Nest  (1866)  and  Mohun 
(1869).  Although  he  was  the  first  Virginian  to  exploit  this 
rich  mine  of  literary  material,  he  was  too  old-fashioned  and 
himself  too  much  a  part  of  the  old  regime  to  make  the  full- 

*An   admirable   biography   of   Cooke  by    Professor   John    0. 
Beaty  is  shortly  to  be  published. 


VIRGINIA  LIFE:  IN  FICTION  [27 

est  use  of  its  literary  possibilities.  Shortly  before  his  death 
he  wrote:  "Mr.  Howells  and  the  other  novelists  have 
crowded  me  out  of  popular  regard  as  a  novelist,  and  have 
brought  the  kind  of  fiction  I  write  into  general  disfavor.  I 
do  not  complain  of  that,  for  they  are  right.  They  see,  as 
I  do,  that  fiction  should  faithfully  reflect  life,  and  they  obey 
the  law,  while  I  can  not.  I  was  born  too  soon,  and  am  now 
too  old  to  learn  my  trade  anew."  To  Cooke  at  all  times  the 
Virginia  of  romance  was  not  that  which  he  had  seen  swept 
away  but  the  Virginia  of  the  Revolution.  He  continued  to 
write  colonial  romances  with  the  strange  result  that  when 
the  revival  of  the  historical  romance  came  in  the  nineties, 
he  was  regarded  as  a  pioneer  when  he  had  simply  never 
ceased  to  be  a  follower  of  Scott  and  Simms. 

To  the  Virginia  novelist  romance  has  always  lain  not  in 
the  near-at-hand  and  the  contemporary  but  in  the  remote 
past.  Just  as  Cooke  and  Caruthers  glorified  the  good  old 
colonial  times,  so  Thomas  Nelson  Page  idealized  the  years 
in  which  they  lived  as  a  Golden  Age.  One  recalls  what  Kip- 
ling says  of  romance  in  The  King: 

Robed,  crowned  and  throned,  he  wove  his  spell, 

Where  heart-blood  beat  or  hearth-smoke  curled, 

With  unconsidered  miracle, 

Hedged  in  a  backward-gazing  world: 

Then  taught  his  chosen  bard  to  say: 

"Our  King  was  with  us — yesterday!" 

The  Virginia  of  the  old  regime  found  its  most  memora- 
ble portrayal  in  the  early  stories  of  Thomas  Nelson  Page. 
It  was  he  who  gave  the  phrase  "before  the  war"  the  mean- 
ing w'hich  it  has  for  later  Virginians.  His  In  Ole  Virginia 
(1887)  is  preeminently  the  Virginia  classic.  Although  con- 
fessedly owing  something  to  Irwin  Russell,  and  perhaps 
also  to  Cable,  R.  M.  Johnston,  and  Joel  Chandler  Harris, 
Page  was  clearly  one  of  the  pioneers  in  the  use  of  negro 
dialect  in  the  short  story  of  local  color.  At  the  close  of  the 
war  Page  was  only  twelve  years  old.  He  saw  the  old  regime 
in  his  most  impressionable  years;  and  when  he  had  grown 
to  manhood,  his  memories  of  it  were  so  unconsciously  ideal- 


28]  VIRGINIA  LIFE;  IN  FICTION 

ized  that  he  cannot  see  it  in  any  other  way  even  when  he 
assumes  the  role  of  historian 

Page's  success  was  due  not  to  the  accuracy  with  which 
he  portrayed  Virginia  life  but  to  the  fact  that,  better  than 
any  one  else,  he  has  expressed  the  spirit  of  the  old  South 
which  survives  in  the  new.  The  later  South  wanted  its 
heroes  painted,  not  as  provincial  tobacco  farmers  but  as 
heroes  and  Cavaliers.  Page  is  unquestionably  sincere  in 
believing  that  his  picture  of  the  old  regime  is  an  accurate 
one.  He  has  undoubtedly  described  it  as  he  remembers  it ; 
but  there  is  just  the  difference  between  his  Virginia  and 
the  real  Virginia  that  one  expects  to  find  between  a  paint- 
ing and  a  photograph.  Certain  details  of  the  old  life  are 
dropped  or  barely  mentioned;  while  others  are  emphasized 
in  every  possible  manner.  For  instance,  the  earlier  novelists 
had  practically  ignored  the  lower  classes;  it  was  left  for 
Page  to  draw  his  villains  from  them.  In  a  review  of  Page's 
The  Old  Dominion  Professor  William  E.  Dodd  has  said : 
"A  note  which  runs  through  all  Mr.  Page  has  ever  written 
is  evident  here  also :  the  judgment  and  the  language  are 
too  frequently  those  of  one  who  supposes  character  to  be 
absolutely  determined  by  status.  All  heroic  characters  are 
gentlemen ;  the  villains  are  outside  the  charmed  circle."  Mrs. 
L.  H.  (Cora)  Harris  has  expressed  much  the  same  view: 
"The  opinion  expressed  of  Thomas  Carlyle  by  one  of  Page's 
characters,  the  'Old  Gentleman  of  the  Black  Stock,'  is  char- 
acteristic of  the  author's  own  point  of  view — 'He  is  not  a 
gentleman,  sir,  and  he  has  never  forgiven  either  the  world 
or  himself  for  it!'  No  shrewder  comment  was  ever  made 
upon  the  surly  Scotchman,  but  it  also  indicates  the  intol- 
erance and  narrowness  of  an  aristocrat's  vision.  So  much 
of  life  lies  beyond  it." 

If  we  remember  Page's  limitations,  we  may  agree  with 
Professor  Edwin  MiiBs  in  saying  that  "Hawthorne  was  not 
better  adapted  to  the  delineation  of  New  England  Puritan- 
ism, or  Scott  to  the  setting  forth  of  the  age  of  chivalry, 
than  was  Mr.  Page  to  the  description  and  interpretation 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [29 

of  ante-bellum  life."  In  his  first  stories  Page  wrote  with 
perfect  naturalness  of  what  he  remembered,  without  re- 
sort to  the  melodramatic  machinery  of  Caruthers,  Cooke, 
and  Mary  Johnston.  Some  of  those  early  stories,  Marse 
Chan,  Meh  Lady,  and  The  Burial  of  the  Guns,  are  undoubt- 
edly to  be  counted  among  the  classics  of  the  American  short 
story.  Cooke  had  treated  the  Civil  War  as  an  episode  in 
itself.  He  was  strangely  blind  to  what  now  seems  the  ob- 
vious fact  that  the  war  marked  the  end  of  the  old  regime 
and  the  beginning  of  the  new  social  order.  Page  was  among 
the  first  to  see  that  the  old  life  was  passing  away ;  and  he 
wisely  avoided  describing  the  great  battles  of  the  war  and 
instead  pictured  the  changes  in  the  social  life  which  were 
brought  on  by  war  and  reconstruction.  His  Morse  Chan  and 
Meh  Lady  begin  not  with  the  fall  of  Fort  Sumter,  but  with 
an  idyllic  picture  of  planter  life,  and  they  close  with  a  picture 
of  planter  poverty  and  desolation.  In  his  stories  the  Vir- 
ginia background  is  a  vital  thing. 

At  the  time  Page  began  to  write,  American  writers  of 
fiction  were  still  busy  exploring  the  West  for  local  color. 
In  a  short  time  the  center  of  interest  shifted  to  the  South, 
and  Page  himself  could  truthfully  say,  "After  less  than  a 
generation  it  [the  old  South]  has  become  among  friends 
and  enemies  the  recognized  field  of  romance/'  In  1888 
Tourgee  wrote,  "A  foreigner  studying  our  current  literature, 
without  knowledge  of  our  history,  and  judging  our  civiliza- 
tion by  our  fiction,  would  undoubtedly  conclude  that  the 
South  was  the  seat  of  intellectual  empire  in  America,  and 
the  African  the  chief  romantic  element  of  our  population." 

Tiie  younger  novelists  who  followed  in  Page's  footsteps 
knew  the  old  regime  only  through  books  or  the  reminiscences 
of  older  people;  but  Mrs.  Burton  Harrison  and  George  Cary 
Eggleston  knew  it  from  personal  experience.  Better  than 
any  one  else,  Mrs.  Harrison  has  described  the  feminine  side 
of  ante-bellum  life.  She  reminds  one  less  of  Page  than  of 
Kennedy  and,  in  her  melodramatic  plots,  of  Caruthers  and 
Cooke.  Her  English  models  were  Thackeray  and  Jane  Aus- 


30]  VIRGINIA  LIFE)  IN  FICTION 

ten.  The  boys  of  Flower  de  Hundred  (1890),  she  says, 
read  Sir  Walter  from  the  library  edition,  and  pooh-poohed 
Miss  Austen  as  rather  a  dull  old  thing,  wiho  wrote  about  peo- 
ple you  could  see  by  just  driving  around  the  country." 
Flower  de  Hundred  is  in  some  ways  a  poor  novel,  but  it  has 
something  of  Jane  Austen's  illuminating  humor  and  of  her 
keen  criticism  of  social  peculiartiies.  Belhaven  Tales 
(1892)  is  a  delightful  account  of  old  Alexandria  somewhat 
in  the  vein  of  Cranford.  There  is  no  such  account  of  ante- 
bellum urban  life  anywhere;  it  deserves  recognition  as  the 
classic  complement  to  In  Ole  Virginia.  Two  of  the  short 
stories  in  that  volume,  Crow's  Nest  and  Una  and  King 
David,  are  among  the  best  short  stories  of  the  Civil  War. 

The  earliest,  the  last,  and  the  most  voluminous  of  the 
later  novelists  of  the  old  regime  is  George  Gary  Eggleston. 
A  brother  of  .the  author  of  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster,  he 
was  born  in  Indiana  of  Virginian  parentage.  In  the  late 
fifties  he  visited  his  relatives  and  settled  in  Richmond  to 
practice  law.  When  the  Civil  War  broke  out,  he  enlisted  in 
the  Confederate  army  and  served  until  the  end.  While 
editor  of  Hearth  and  Home,  he  wrote  his  first  novel,  A  Man 
of  Honor  (1873),  for  a  journalistic  emergency,  much  as 
his  brother  Edward  had  written  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster. 
Nearly  thirty  years  later,  after  a  varied  career  as  a  journal- 
ist, he  retired  and  devoted  himself  to  the  writing  of  novels 
of  Virginia  life.  His  later  novels  give  a  much  more  highly 
colored  picture  of  the  old  regime.  This  is  partly  due  to  the 
influence  of  Page  and  to  the  change  in  the  popular  attitude, 
but  perhaps  still  more  to  time  and  the  tricks  of  an  old  man's 
memory.  One  has  only  to  compare  his  A  Man  of  Honor 
(1873)  with  his  Dorothy  South  (1902)  to  see  how  greatly 
time  has  colored  the  picture.  In  1910  he  wrote  that  a  critic 
had  charged  him  with  creating  his  delightful  picture  of  Vir- 
ginia out  of  his  own  imagination  "for  the  entertainment  of 
New  England  readers."  Nowhere,  however,  does  Eggles- 
ton show  any  consciousness  of  a  change  in  attitude.  Of 
the  charm  which  he  found  in  the  old  Virginia  life  he  wrote 


VIRGINIA  LIFE;  IN  FICTION  [31 

in  1903 :  "To  me  it  was  the  complete  realization  of  ro- 
mance, the  actual  embodiment  of  poetry,  a  dream  life  of 
exquisite  perfection.  It  was  a  hundred  years  behind  the 
times,  but  for  that  very  reason  it  fascinated  my  mind  as 
nothing  else  has  ever  done,  before  or  since.  It  violated  all 
the  maxims  of  prudence  that  had  lain  at  the  basis  of  my 
education,  but  I  was  overjoyed  to  be  rid  of  the  allegiance  to 
these.  It  ran  counter  to  all  I  had  learned  of  strenuousness, 
but  I  was  weary  of  strenuousness." 

'  In  structure  Eggleston's  novels  are  usually  poor.  One 
suspects  that  his  old  friend  Cooke  is  partly  responsible  for 
certain  melodramatic  situations  and  the  conventional  villain 
although  one  cannot  blame  Cooke  for  the  bad  dialogue.  No 
later  writer,  however,  throws  so  much  light  upon  the  pecu- 
liar manners  and  social  customs  of  Old  Virginia.  His  set- 
ting is  always  delightfully  done.  This  will  not  make  his 
novels  live,  but  it  should  make  them  always  interesting  to 
the  reader  who  wishes  to  know  what  a  shrewd  and  kindly 
Western  critic  thought  of  old  Virginia  life.  More  interest- 
ing than  any  of  his  novels  is  his  charming  essay  in  the  At- 
lantic Monthly*,  The  Old  Regime  in  the  Old  Dominion, 
which  Howells  had  asked  him  to  expand  to  twice  its  orig- 
inal length. 

In  the  late  eighties  and  early  nineties,  owing  partly  to 
Cooke's  example  and  partly  to  the  international  revival  of 
the  historical  romance,  Colonial  and  Revolutionary  Virginia 
again  attracted  the  novelist  and  began  to  compete  with  the 
ante-bellum  period  in  popular  interest.  Although  others 
like  Hallie  Ermine  Rives  and  Maud  Wilder  Goodwin  en- 
tered this  field  also,  Mary  Johnston  has  made  it  her  own; 
and  though  in  her  later  novels  she  has  deserted  her  first 
field,  she  is  still  popularly  remembered  as  the  author  of 
Prisoners  of  Hope  and  To  Have  and  to  Hold.  Her  success 
induced  several  Northern  and  Western  novelists,  notably 
Burton  Egbert  Stevenson  and  Mary  E.  Wilkins  Freeman,  to 
turn  to  Colonial  Virginia  for  a  romantic  background.  Her 

*Vol.  36,  pp.  603-616. 


32]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

success  has  perhaps  also  had  mudb  to  do  with  the  numerous 
juvenile  novels  dealing  with  Virginia  history. 

Miss  Johnston  continues  the  Caruthers-Cooke  tradition. 
Her  plots  are  quite  as  sensational  as  theirs,  quite  as  full  of 
mysteries  and  melodramatic  incidents.  All  three  novelists, 
in  fact,  recall  the  dime-novel  again  and  again.  Her  back- 
ground is  unreal,  and  this  in  spite  of  her  accurate  use  of 
many  historical  details  of  dress  and  manners.  Her  knowl- 
edge of  history,  like  Cooke's,  serves  only  to  make  her  unreal 
world  seem  plausible  to  the  uncritical  reader.  Everything 
is  idealized ;  even  the  scenery  takes  on  a  tropical  richness 
of  coloring.  Her  Virginia  is,  in  Governor  Berkeley's  lan- 
guage, "the  land  of  good  eating,  good  drinking,  stout  men, 
and  pretty  women/'  Her  Virginia  is  (the  Utopia  of  melo- 
dramatic romance.  It  is  essentially  inferior  to  the  Arcadian 
land  of  Thomas  Nelson  Page.  At  the  same  time  one  must 
give  Miss  Johnston  credit  for  her  excellences.  Her  ability 
to  tell  a  thrilling  story  of  adventure  cannot  be  denied.  Miss 
Johnston  possesses  the  narrative  instinct,  as  Scott,  Cooper, 
and  Stevenson  did.  Though  few  of  her  characters  are  of 
real  flesh  and  blood,  her  types  are  often  well  chosen  and 
sometimes  strikingly  portrayed.  More  than  any  other  Vir- 
ginian novelist,  she  appreciates  the  value  in  fiction  of  Vir- 
ginian class  distinctions.  In  fact,  her  plots  often  turn  upon 
the  social  barrier  between  classes.  Miss  Johnston  was  the 
first  novelist  after  Defoe  to  see  the  value  of  the  indentured 
servant  as  a  character  in  fiction.  The  hero  of  her  first 
novel,  Prisoners  of  Hope  (1898),  the  best  of  the  three  deal 
ing  with  Colonial  Virginia,  is  a  convict  who  cherishes  a 
hopeless  love  for  Patricia,  the  daughter  of  the  great  land- 
lord who  owns  him. 

At  this  point  we  may  mention  those  British  authors  who 
since  Thackeray's  time  have  written  upon  Virginian  sub- 
jects. Arthur  Granville  Bradley's  Sketches  from  Old  Vir- 
ginia (1897)  and  Other  Days  (1913),  though  not  to  be 
classed  as  fiction,  give  a  unique  picture  of  Virginia  life  in 
the  Reconstruction  period,  sympathetic  but  markedly  at 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [33 

variance  with  the  picture  found  in  Page's  Red  Rock  (1898). 
Bradley  was  one  of  a  number  of  Englishmen  who  after  the 
Civil  War  bought  Virginia  estates  and  tried  to  live  like  Eng- 
lish country  gentlemen.  Few  of  (them  succeeded  in  restoring 
the  worn-out  soil  to  fertility,  and  Bradley  after  about  ten 
years  left  Virginia.  A  comparison  of  Bradley's  Marse  Dab 
with  Dr.  Gary  of  Red  Rock  reveals  the  extent  to  Which  Page 
has  idealized  the  old  Virginia  gentleman.  Even  in  (the  twen- 
tieth century  two  British  novelists  have  been  attracted  to 
Colonial  Virginia.  John  Masefield's  two  stories  of  Virginia 
and  the  sea,  Lost  Endeavor  (1910)  and  Captain  Margaret 
(1916),  faintly  recall  the  Virginia  of  Defoe.  The  hero  of 
Lost  Endeavour  is,  like  Colonel  Jack,  kidnapped  and  sold 
as  an  indentured  servant  to  Virginia.  In  both  novels  Virginia 
is  no  more  than  a  'half -way  station  on  the  route  to  the  Span- 
ish Main.  The  Virginia  background  in  both  novels  is  ex- 
tremely hazy  and,  wherever  definitely  described,  usually  in- 
accurate. For  instance,  the  Virginians,  Masefield  tells  us  in 

Captain  Margaret,  "had  no  wines They  did  not  play 

cards.  They  would  often  ride  forty  miles  to  a  prayer  meet- 
ing in  a  wood."  The  Scottish  novelist,  John  Buchan,  at- 
tracted by  the  romantic  background  of  Mary  Johnston,  has 
written  in  Salute  to  Adventurers  (1917)  one  of  the  most 
readable  romances  of  Colonial  Virginia. 

About  1900  we  note  the  beginnings  of  a  gradual  change 
in  the  trend  of  Virginia  fiction  so  marked  as  to  be  de- 
scribed as  revolutionary.  A  literary  revolution  we  may 
well  call  it,  for  it  freed  the  Virginia  novelist  from  the  ty- 
rannical spell  of  a  legendary  past,  and  it  introduced  into 
Virginia  fiction  a  democratic  note  which  had  rarely  been 
found  there  before.  In  other  words,  since  1900  "Southern" 
literature  has  for  the  first  time  become  genuinely  American. 
The  twentieth  century  has  witnessed  the  rise  of  a  number  of 
Virginia  novelists,  Ellen  Glasgow,  James  Branch  Cabell, 
Henry  Sydnor  Harrison,  and  others,  who  have  turned  their 
backs  squarely  upon  the  time-hallowed  traditions  of  their 
section.  More  significant  still  is  the  fact  that  older  writers, 


34]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

like  Thomas  Nelson  Page  and  Mary  Johnston,  have  ex- 
ecuted what  we  may  call  a  literary  about-face.  Page's  John 
Marvel,  Assistant  and  Miss  Johnston's  Hagar  do  not  belong 
to  the  same  world  as  his  earlier  In  Ole  Virginia  and  her 
To  Have  and  To  Hold. 

This  marked  change  in  the  character  of  Virginia  fiction, 
whidh  began  in  1897  with  Miss  Glasgow's  first  novel,  The 
Descendant,  was  the  tardy  but  inevitable  consequence  of  the 
profound  changes  which  the  Civil  War  wrought  in  Virginia 
life.  The  years  following  the  war  witnessed  the  gradual 
disintegration  of  the  old  aristocratic  order  and  the  rise  of  the 
lower  classes  whic'h  slavery  had  kept  in  a  subordinate  posi- 
tion. The  new  social  life  of  Virginia  rests  upon  exactly  the 
same  economic  basis  as  the  social  life  of  the  North  and 
West ;  but  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  the  war  there  was 
a  marked  discrepancy  between  the  ideal  and  the  actual  life 
of  Virginia.  The  new  South  was  democratic,  and  it  was 
rapidly  becoming  industrial;  but  it  still  professed  undying 
allegiance  to  the  semi- feudal  old  South,  which  it  revered 
without  fully  understanding.  The  virtues  of  the  new 
South  were  American,  Nor/thern  rather  than' Southern.  Its 
progressive  farmers  and  business  men  were  long  in  realiz- 
ing that  it  is  altogether  impossible  to  follow  the  old  South- 
ern gentleman's  code  of  living  in  an  alien  economic  dispen- 
sation. The  South,  in  genuinely  Quixotic  fashion,  professed 
one  ideal  and  followed  another.  It  was  probably  the  war 
with  Spain  that  caused  the  South  first  to  suspect  that  it  was 
worshiping  an  obsolete  ideal.  It  has  been  only  since  that 
time  that  speech  and  press  have  been  sufficiently  free  to  per- 
mit Southern  writers  like  Miss  Glasgow  to  attack  outworn 
ideals  without  the  certainty  of  the  social  ostracism  which  be- 
fell Mr.  Cable  in  Louisiana. 

In  choosing  as  the  hero  of  her  first  novel  an  illegitimate 
poor  white  who  leaves  Virginia  to  escape  the  odium  attached 
to  his  birth  and  class,  Miss  Glasgow  deliberately  violated 
a  long  literary  tradition.  She  chose  to  write  of  the  present 
raither  than  of  the  romantic  past ;  and  later  when  she  por- 


VIRGINIA  UFE  IN  FICTION  [35 

t rayed  the  old  Virginia  gentleman,  she  took  off  his  halo 
and  pictured  him  as  a  human  being.  She  was  the  first  to 
see  that  certain  social  classes  had  been  almost  entirely  ig- 
nored by  ;her  predecessors.  She  was,  in  short,  the  first  Vir- 
ginia novelist  to  attain  a  genuinely  national  outlook  upon 
the  life  of  her  state,  the  first  Virginia  novelist  with  a  demo- 
cratic attitude  toward  life. 

The  Deliverance  (1904),  perhaps  Miss  Glasgow's  best 
novel,  deals  with  the  same  period  as  Page's  Red  Rock 
(1898)  ;  but  in  spilte  of  the  fairly  close  resemblance  between 
the  two  novels  in  plot,  her  book  in  spirit  and  purpose  dif- 
fers profoundly  from  his.  Page  treats  the  old  planters  as 
heroic  martyrs  robbed  of  all  they  hold  dear  by  rascally  car- 
pet-baggers and  scalawags.  His  novel  is  a  special  plea,  al- 
most a  piece  of  propaganda ;  and!  his  characters  are  either 
melodramatic  villains  or  romantic  abstractions.  It  is  not  the 
overseer's  theft  of  the  master's  plantation  that  interests  Miss 
Glasgow  but  the  consequences  of  that  act  upon  the  two  fam- 
ilies. Can  any  one  imagine  Page  as  representing  an  over- 
seer's granddaughter  as  a  lady  who  marries  a  scion  of  one  of 
the  First  Families  of  Virginia? 

It  was  in  her  third  novel,  The  Voice  of  the  People 
(1900),  that  Miss  Glasgow  found  herself  and  gave  to  Vir- 
ginia fiction  the  first  important  novel  of  the  new  type. 
Earlier  novelists  had  practically  ignored  the  poor  whites. 
She  saw  ithat  the  war  'had  made  Virginia  society  so  demo- 
cratic that  even  the  lowest  might  hope  some  day  to  sit,  like 
Nick  Burr,  in  the  governor's  chair.  Miss  Glasgow  returned 
to  the  theme  of  The  Voice  of  the  People  in  The  Romance 
of  a  Plain  Man  (1909)  and  The  Miller  of  Old  Church 
(1911).  The  poor  white  farmers  in  The  Miller  of  Old 
Church  are  better  done  than  those  in  The  Voice*  of  the 
People;  but  The  Romance  of  a  Plain  Man,  a  story  of  big 
business  in  Richmond,  is  the  best  of  the  three  novels.  In  this 
story  Ben  Starr,  the  most  lifelike  of  her  poor  white  heroes, 
marries  into  the  class  above  him  only  to  find  that,  though 
his  financial  success  has  admitted  him  to  the  best  social 


36]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

circle,  there  is  much  which  he  has  still  to  learn  from  his  wife 
and  her  class. 

Miss  Glasgow's  Virginia  (1913)  and  Life  and  Gabriella 
(1916)  represent  still  another  type  of  novel.  These  two 
stones  and  Mary  Johnston's  Hagar  (1913)  mark  an  em- 
phatic revolt  against  the  ideals  of  the  ante-bellum  Virginia 
lady.  Gabriella  and  Hagar  are  Virginian  women  of  the 
new  type ;  Virginia,  who  is  a  failure  in  the  new  social  order, 
represents  the  vanishing  type.  Miss  Johnston's  description 
of  the  boarding  school  to  which  Hagar  is  sent  by  her  grand- 
parents is  a  satiric  gem:  "No  one  could  be  so  cross-grained 
as  to  deny  that  Eglantine  was  a  sweet  place.  It  lay  sweet- 
ly on  jusit  the  right,  softly  swelling  hill.  The  oldi  grey  stucco 
main  house  had  a  sweet  porch,  with  wistaria  growing  sweet- 
ly over  it ;  the  long,  added  grey-stucco  wings  had  pink  and 
white  roses  growing  sweetly  on  trellises  between  the  win- 
dows. ...  It  was  a  sweet  place.  Every  one  said  so — par- 
ents and  guardians,  the  town  that  neighboured  Eglantine, 
tourists  that  drove  by,  visitors  to  the  commencement  exer- 
cises— everybody !  The  girls  themselves  said  so.  It  was 
praised  of  all — almost  all.  The  place  was  swe"et.  M.  Morel, 
the  French  teacher,  who  was  always  improving  his  English, 
and  so  on  the  hunt  for  synonyms,  once  said  in  company  that 
it  was  saccharine."  Hagar,  however,  is  "a  wilful  piece.'' 
She  becomes  an  author  and  a  radical  with  all  the  new  ideas 
which  her  grandparents  cannot  abide.  She  is,  in  fact,  the 
very  antithesis  of  'the  old  Virginia  lady  of  Marse  Chan  and 
Red  Rock. 

Perhaps  the  most  scathing  attack  on  Virginian  conservatism 
and  worship  of  the  past  has  been  written  by  James  Branch 
Cabell  in  The  Rivet  in  Grandfathers  Neck  (1915).  One  of 
his  Virginia  characters  says:  "Here,  you  know,  we  have  the 
best  blood  in  America,  and — for  utilitarian  purposes — that 
means  the  worst  blood.  Ah,  we  may  prate  of  our  superiority 
to  the  rest  of  the  world, — and  God  knows,  we  do! — but.  at 
bottom,  we  are  worthless.  We  are  worn  out,  I  tell  you !  we 
are  effete  and  stunted  in  brain  and  will-power,  and  the  very 


VIRGINIA  LIFE:  IN  FICTION  [37 

desire  of  life  is  gone  out  of  us!  We  are  contented  simply  to 
exist  in  Lichfield."  "  'A  hamlet  of  Hamlets/  was  Patricia's 
verdict  as  to  Lichfield — 'whose  actual  tragedy  isn't  that  their 
fathers  were  badly  treated,  but  that  they  themselves  are  con- 
stitutionally unable  to  do  anything  except  talk  about  how 
badly  their  fathers  were  treated.' ' 

That  Thomas  Nelson  Page  should  ever  write  such  a  novel 
as  John  Marvel,  Assistant  (1909)  would  have  been  incredi- 
ble to  any  one  two  decades  ago ;  and  it  shows  better  than  any 
other  novel  the  extent  of  the  change  which  has  come  over 
Virginia  fiction.  A  reviewer  of  his  Gordon  Keith  (1903) 
wrote:  "The  romantic  details  of  plantation  monarchies  and 
other  features  of  the  old  South  are  no  longer  interestering 
material  .  .  .  .  it  is  time  the  South  buried  her  dead  and 
dealt  more  exclusively  with  her  living  heroes,  lest  the  world 
should  conclude  there  are  none  worthy  of  her  past  glories." 
Mrs.  Corra  Harris  wrote  in  1907:  "A  country  or  a  section 
may  change  so  suddenly  in  its  character  and  ambitions  that 
an  author  who  once  portrayed  the  life  of  it  can  do  so  no 
longer.  .  .  .  Now,  something?  has  happened  in  the  South 
during  the  last  ten  years  so  radical  and  so  overwhelming  that 
what  was  true  is  now  history,  what  was  characteristic  has  be- 
come bombastic,  and  w'hat  were  principles  of  living  are  mere 
sentimentalities  connected  with  the  code  duello  existence  of 
the  past.  .  .  .  the  South  has  outgrown  Mr.  Page." 

Page's  literary  career,  however,  displays  an  unexpected 
determination  to  keep  pace  with  the  progress  of  American 
thought  and  literary  endeavor.  That  he  has  not  been  alto- 
gether successful  is  due  less  to  a  lack  of  adaptability  on  his 
part  than  to  the  amazing  rapidity  of  the  changes  in  Virginian 
ideals  of  life  and  of  fiction.  In  John  Marvel,  Assistant,  as  in 
Mary  Johnston's  Haga/r  and  The  Long  Roll,  we  note  the  ab- 
sence of  nearly  everything  which  we  had  come  to  regard  as 
characteristic  of  the  author.  Page,  like  Miss  Johnston,  has 
done  with  fair  success  the  one  thing  which  no  one  thought  it 
possible  for  him  to  do.  Not  only  are  practically  all  the  old 
character  types  gone,  but  the  old  Virginia  class  consciousness 


38]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

is  gone,  too ;  and  in  its  place  we  find  the  social  sympathies  of 
the  reformer.  In  Henry  Glave,  the  hero,  Page  describes  the 
change  through  which  he  himself  seems  to  have  gone.  Like 
Gordon  Keith,  Glave  is  the  son  of  a  gentleman,  but  he  has 
even  at  the  outset  a  certain  contempt  for  his  father's  "inade- 
quacy to  the,  new  state  of  things."  Glave' s  failure  in  college 
and  in  his  first  business  venture  is  due  to  the  fact  that  he  is 
so  well  satisfied  with  the  achievements  of  his  ancestors  that 
he  feels  no  need  to  add  any  of  his  own.  He  goes  West,  and 
after  a  very  hard  struggle  with  poverty,  which  gives  'him  his 
new  social  sympathies,  he  works  his  way  up.  At  the  close  of 
the  story  he  is  a  thorough  American  with  almost  nothing  of 
the  Virginia  aristocrat  left  in  his  ideals.  The  secondary  he- 
roes are  a  middle-class  minister  and  a  Jewish  radical,  who 
expounds  a  doctrine  that  seems  as  unlike  the  earlier  Page  as 
anything  imaginable :  "There  is  no  established  order.  It  is 
always  upset  in  time,  either  for  good  or  ill.  It  never  abides, 
for  change  is  the  law/' 

One  who  reads  in  chronological  order  the  novels  by  North- 
ern writers  Who  touch  the  later  Virginia  will  note  in  them  a 
change  almost  the  very  reverse  of  that  which  we  have  just 
described  in  the  Virginia  authors.  The  earlier  Northern 
writers,  like  Lydia  Wood  Baldwin,  Frank  R.  Stockton,  and 
Edmund  Pendleton,  saw  Virginia  with  their  own  eyes  or 
through  the  medium  of  Northern  prejudice;  the  later  North- 
ern writers  are,  curiously  enough,  among  the  last  to  keep 
alive  the  old  Virginia  tradition.  In  Big  Tremaine  (1914) 
Miss  Marie  Van  Vorst  describes  as  contemporary  what  is 
really  ante-bellum  social  life.  The  old  planter  families  are 
represented  as  still  living  on  their  estates;  little  is  altered 
except  that  the  negroes  are  free.  Doubtless  there  are  people 
at  the  North  who  imagine  that  present-day  Virginia  is  the 
Arcadia  that  is  described  in  Big  Tremaine.  All  the  old  types 
are  here — the  old  Virginia  gentleman,  the  old-fashioned  lady, 
the  old-school  lawyer,  the  negro  mammy.  The  run  of  John 
Taintor  Foote's  comedy,  Toby's  Bow,  at  the  Comedy  The- 
ater during  the  season  of  1918-19 — and  in  the  moving  picture 


VIRGINIA  LIFE;  IN  FICTION  [39 

theaters  since  that  time — shows  that  the  traditional  picture 
of  Virginia  still  possesses  a  charm  for  Northern  audiences. 
Here  the  sweetness,  simplicity,  and  purity  of  the  traditional 
Virginia  are  set  over  against  the  vices  of  New  York's  Bo- 
hemia. A  New  York  novelist,  whom  dissipation  is  fast  rob- 
bing of  'his  literary  powers,  goes  to  Virginia  and  falls  in  love 
with  a  pure  and  sweet  Virginia  girl.  The  heroine,  except  for 
her  literary  aspirations,  belongs  to  the  same  type  as  Miss 
Glasgow's  Virginia  Pendleton.  Here  we  find  again  the  old 
"mansion"  which  has  been  in  the  family  for  two  hundred 
years,  the  faithful  old  darky,  a  type  which  'has  been  practi- 
cally extinct,  outside  of  fiction,  for  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
and  the  old  grandmother  who  knows  nothing  of  business  and 
has  no  idea  that  her  estate  is  about  to  be  sold  for  debt.  She 
is  an  anachronism.  Though  the  scene  is  laid  in  modern  pro- 
hibition Virginia,  the  old  lady,  like  the  playwright  perhaps, 
still  unaware  of  this  fact,  insists  that  wine  be  served  on  the 
table  no  matter  if  all  the  guests  are  total  abstainers.  But 
Hallie  Erminie  Rives's  The  Valiants  of  Virginia  (1912)  re- 
minds us  that  a  native  novelist  can  also  help  perpetuate  the 
legend  that  the  old  planter  life  survives  unchanged  in  the 
country  districts  of  Virginia.  As  James  Branch  Cabell  has 
put  it,  "The  vitality  of  the  legend  is  wonderful." 

The  history  of  Virginia  fiction,  like  the  history  of  Vir- 
ginia life,  exhibits  at  every  point  the  clash  of  aristocratic  or 
conservative  and  democratic  or  radical  tendencies.  In  each 
case  we  find  at  first  the  aristocratic  forces  everywhere  tri- 
umphant, but  in  the  period  following  the  war  we  see  the 
democratic  forces  gradually  gaining  the  ascendancy.  The 
spirit  of  the  novelists  has  been  a  faithful  reflection  of  the 
spirit  of  the  social  life.  It  does  not  follow,  however,  that 
the  fiction  has  mirrored  faithfully  the  life  of  the  people. 
Whether  or  not  we  agree  with  Brander  Matthews  that  the 
historical  novel  can  never  be  anything  but  "an  inferior  form 
of  art,"  there  is  no  mistaking  the  conclusion  that  it  has  done 
much  to  keep  alive  certain  popular  legends  that  might  per- 
haps better  have  been  left  to  die.  Whether  or  not  Virginia 


40]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

fiction  has  been  the  gainer  for  the  tradition  upon  which  it  is 
built  will  be  decided  by  each  reader  according  to  his  predilec- 
tions in  novels.  If  'he  be  a  realist,  he  will  say  that  Virginia 
fiction  has  given  us,  on  the  whole,  anything  but  a  faithful 
reflection  of  Virginia  life.  If,  however,  his  taste  runs  to 
romance,  he  will  contend,  as  did  Simms,  that  obscurity  and 
the  glamor  of  legend  are  necessary  before  a  great  novel  can 
be  made  out  of  the  history  of  any  state  or  country. 

Until  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  Virginia  felt 
so  strongly  her  entity  as  a  state — a  nation,  one  might  almost 
say — that  it  has  been  possible  to  study  her  literature  without 
much  attention  to  the  literature  of  the  rest  of  the  country. 
This  will  not  be  true  in  the  future.  The  time  is  past  when 
a  novelist  can  write  merely  for  a  Virginian  or  even  a  South- 
ern audience.  The  literary  future  of  Virginia  is  indissolubly 
bound  up  with  that  of  the  nation.  Virginia  should  be  one  of 
the  richest  fields  in  American  fiction  for  a  long  time  to  come. 
No  state  has  a  richer  historical  background  or  greater  indi- 
vidual charm.  The  novelist  of  the  future  Virginia  will,  it 
seems  fair  to  guess,  pay  less  attention  to  the  past  and  more 
to  the  present.  If  the  heroic  and  idyllic  epochs  are  forever 
past,  he  can  still  console  himself  with  the  Virginia  poet, 
Benjamin  Sledd,  who  sings: 

Dear  land  of  many  streams  and  mighty  hills, — 

And  dear  wherever  glory  lives,  thy  name, 

Though  latter  years  may  link  it  with  their  shame     .     .     . 

Why  should  we  weep 

O'er  glory  past?    Still  stands — shall  ever  stand — 
Unchanged,  unchangeable,  each  mighty  steep, 
And  vale  and  stream  their  olden  beauty  keep — 
Sure  witnesses  from  their  creator's  hand 
Of  favoring  love  to  thee,  my  own  dear  land. 


VIRGINIA  LIF£  IN  FICTION  (41 


CHAPTER  TWO 

COLONIAL    VIRGINIA 

I.  Virginia  in  Elizabethan  Poetry  and  Drama. — Although 
the  number  of  allusions  to  Virginia  is  considerable,  in 
only  two  or  three  instances  does  Virginia  play  a  notable 
part  in  any  Elizabethan  poem  or  play.  Smith's  works 
contain  thirty  poems  from  friendly  poets,  including 
Wither,  Donne,  and  John  Davies  of  Hereford.  Spenser 
twice  refers  to  Virginia.  Daniel  and  Dray  ton  allude  to 
Virginia  most  frequently.  Virginia  plays  a  part  in  two 
masques,  the  unimportant  Maske  of  Flowers  and  The 
Memorable  Maske  of  .  .  .  .  the  Middle  Temple  and 
Lyncolns  Inne,  written  by  Chapman  and  staged  by  Inigo 
Jones. 

In  the  regular  drama  Virginia  had  a  bad  reputation. 
Illustrative  quotations  from  Massinger:  The  City 
Madam  (V,  i),  Fletcher:  The  Noble  Gentleman  (V,  iii), 
etc.  The  brilliant  comedy,  Eastward  Hoe  (1605);  by 
Chapman,  Jonson,  and  Marston,  satirizes  the  Virginian 
emigrants,  whose  character  is  indicated  by  the  names 
Flash,  Seagull,  Spendall,  and  Scapethrift.  Shakespeare's 
The  Tempest  was  partly  inspired  by  the  story  of  the 
wreck  of  the  Sea  Venture  in  the  Bermudas  while  on  her 
way  to  Virginia. 

i  1 .  Captain  John  Smith  and  the  Princess  Pocahontas. — There 
is  an  epic  quality  about  the  story  of  the  founding  of 
Jamestown  which  helps  to  explain  its  wide  popularity 
as  a  theme  among  poets,  dramatists,  and  novelists.  Like 
Aeneas,  Smith  is  regarded  as  the  founder  of  a  new 
nation  and  the  embodiment  of  Virginian  qualities,  the 
ideal  Cavalier.  Pocahontas's  role  is  that  of  protecting 
deity  to  the  infant  colony.  Her  supposedly  tragic  love 
story  adds  romantic  charm. 

Ever  since  1859  historians  have  violently  disagreed  as 


42]  VIRGINIA  UFE  IN  FICTION 

to  Smith's  reliability  as  historian  of  the  colony.  The 
weight  of  authority,  however,  is  now  decidedly  against 
Smith.  He  was  a  partisan  of  James  I,  and  treated  un- 
fairly the  liberal  Virginia  Company,  which  gave  the 
colony  its  right  to  self-government.  The  story  of  the 
rescue  rests  solely  upon  Smith's  own  testimony  and  is 
probably  untrue. 

The  English  literary  traveler,  John  Davis,  who  spent 
some  time  in  Virginia  tutoring  the  children  of  wealthy 
planters,  introduced  the  Smith-Pocahontas  story  into 
fiction  in  1803.  This  short  story  he  expanded  in  1805 
into  a  novelette  and  finally  in  1806  into  a  historical  ro- 
mance, The  First  Settlers  of  Virginia.  Davis' s  first  ver- 
sion is  his  best;  the  final  version  is  overweighted  with 
historical  material,  much  of  which  is  copied  almost  ver- 
batim from  Robertson  and  Belknap.  The  Pocahontas 
story  does  not  lend  itself  readily  to  treatment  in  the 
novel  or  the  play.  The  most  dramatic  incident,  the  res- 
cue, comes  too  early;  and  Pocahontas  marries  the  un- 
romantic  Rolfe  while  neither  she  nor  Smith  dies  of  a 
broken  heart. 

Most  of  the  Pocahontas  poems  and  plays  were  writ- 
ten before  the  Civil  War ;  most  of  the  novels,  many  of 
them  suggested  by  the  Jamestown  Tercentennial  of  1907. 
belong  to  the  later  period.  The  chief  plays  are  Barker : 
The  Indian  Princess  (1808) ,  Custis :  Pocahontas  ( 1830) , 
Robert  Dale  Owen:  Pocahontas  (1837),  Margaret  Ull- 
mann:  Pocahontas:  a  Pageant  (1912),  and  two  bur- 
lesques, John  Brougham :  P  o-ca-hon-tas  ;  or,  The  Gentle 
Savage  (1855),  and  Philip  Moeller :  Pokey  (1818).  The 
chief  Pocahontas  poems  are  Mary  Webster  Mosby :  Po- 
cahontas (1840),  William  Watson  Waldron:  Pocahon- 
tas (1841),  Mrs.  Lydia  H.  Sigourney:  Pocahontas 
(1841),  Seba  Smith :  Powhatan  (1841).  Briefer  poems 
of  better  quality  are  Thackeray's  Pocahontas,  Mrs.  Mar- 
garet Junkin  Preston's  Last  Meeting  of  Pocahontas  and 
the  Great  Captain,  and  Vachel  Lindsay's  war  poem, 


VIRGINIA  UFE  IN  FICTION  [43 

Our  Mother  Pocahontas.  The  best  novels  are  Cooke : 
My  Lady  Pokahontas  (1885)  and  Vaughan  Kester : 
John  o'  Jamestown  (1907).  See  bibliography  for  other 
titles.  No  literary  treatment  of  the  Pocahontas  story  be- 
trays the  slightest  suspicion  that  Smith's  account  is  open 
to  question.  The  vitality  of  the  legend  is  amazing. 

III.  The  Cavalier  and  the  Indentured  Servant. — The  novels 
which  deal  with  later  Colonial  Virginia  represent  two 
well  defined  traditions:  the  English,  dealing  with  the 
indentured  servant,  and  the  Virginian,  portraying  the 
Cavalier.    The  number  of  Cavaliers  who  settled  in  Vir- 
ginia has  been  enormously  exaggerated.     Bruce  finds 
only  forty-three  families  with  the  right  to  a  coat-of- 
arms.   "The  aristocratic  character  of  Virginia  society," 
says  Wertenbaker  in  Patrician  and  Plebeian  in  Virginia, 
"was  the  result  of  development  within  the  colony.     It 
proceeded  from  economic,  political  and  social  causes. 
On  its  economic  side  it  was  built  up  by  the  system  of 
large  plantations,  by  the  necessity  for  indentured  or 
slave  labor,  by  the  direct  trade  with  England ;  politically 
it  was  engendered  by  the  lack  of  a  vigorous  middle  class 
in  the  first  half  of  the  17th  century,  and  was  sustained 
by  the  method  of  appointment  to  office;  on  its  social  side 
it  was  fostered  by  the  increasing  wealth  of  the  planters 
and  by  the  ideal  of  the  English  gentleman."  Quotations 
from  historians  arranged  chronologically  show  a  steady 
growth  in  the  number  of  Cavaliers  estimated  to  have 
settled   in   Virginia   while   the   number   of    indentured 
servants  proportionately  declines. 

IV.  The  English  Tradition :   Mrs.  Behn  and  Defoe. — Mrs. 
Behn's  play,  The  Widow  Ranter,  acted  in  1690,  is  a 
curious  mixture  of  comedy,  tragedy,  and  romance,  con- 
taining much  satire  on  colonial  self-government.     Its 
historical  hero,   Nathaniel  Bacon,  is  in  love  with  the 
Indian  queen,  Semernia. 

Defoe's  favorite  solution  of  the  pauper  and  criminal 


44]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

problem  was  colonization,  but  the  story  of  Moll  Flanders 
( 1722)  gives  a  poor  illustration  of  his  scheme.  In  Colonel 
Jacque,  published  later  in  the  same  year,  Defoe,  choosing 
a  man  as  his  leading  character,  shows  more  successfully 
how  a  convict  could  rehabilitate  himself  in  Virginia. 
Defoe  also  pleads  for  a  humaner  treatment  of  negro 
slaves.  His  novels  give  us  our  best  account  of  the  white 
slaves  of  Virginia. 

V.  The  Virginian  Tradition  :  Caruthers  and  Mary  Johnston. 

— Caruthers,  author  of  The  Cavaliers  of  Virginia 
(1834-5),  and  Mary  Johnston  have  written  the  most 
important  and  influential  novels  dealing  with  Colonial 
Virginia.  Discussion  of  Caruthers's  novels.  Miss  John- 
ston continues  the  Caruthers-Cooke  tradition  and  re- 
introduces  the  indentured  servant  into  fiction.  Discus- 
sion of  Prisoners  of  Hope  (1898). 

VI.  Other  Novelists  of  Colonial  Virginia. — Bacon's  Rebel- 
lion the  subject  of  a  number  of  novels.  Historical  events 
which  play  no  part  in  fiction.    Prevost :  Le  Philosophy 
Anglais    (1728-39).     Mary     Wilkins     Freeman:    The 
Heart's  Highway  (1900).     John  Masefield :    Lost  En- 
deavour (1910)  and  Captain  Margaret  (1916).     John 
Buchan  :  Salute  to  Adventurers  (1917). 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [45 


CHAPTER  THREE 

THE   REVOLUTION 

I.  Introduction,  —  "The  Revolution   furnished  the  epic  of 

American  'history/'  says  Professor  Shotwell.  Historians 
and  other  writers  have  greatly  idealized  the  struggle  for 
independence.  This,  according  to  Sydney  George  Fisher, 
explains  the  poor  quality  of  the  fiction  dealing  with  the 
Revolution.  There  is  no  inspiration  in  "a  scholastic, 
academic  revolution  that  never  happened  and  that  is 
barren  of  all  traits  of  human  nature." 

II.  George  Washington. — No  American  has  been  more  the 

victim  of  legend  and  misunderstanding  than  Washing- 
ton. It  seems,  however,  that  other  biographies  than 
that  of  Weems  are  responsible  for  the  priggish  perfec- 
tion that  represents  Washington  in  fiction.  In  The  Vir- 
ginians Thackeray  apparently  did  his  best  to  discover 
tihe  true  George  Washington,  with  sufficient  success  to 
offend  Americans  of  his  time.  Other  novels  in  which 
Washington  plays  a  part  are  of  no  great  importance. 

III.  Other  Historical  Characters. — Nearly  every  prominent 
Virginian   of   Revolutionary     times   is   the   subject   of 
legend  and  misconception.     The  novelists  always  pre- 
serve such  traditions,  seldom  using  the  best  historical 
sources  available.    Lord  Fairfax's  intimacy  with  Wash- 
ington has  been  greatly  exaggerated.     Wirt's   life  of 
Patrick  Henry  launched  the  legend  of  a  great  idle,  igno- 
rant genius  and  has  influenced  all  fictitious  portraits  of 
Henry,  including  that  of  Cooke  in   The  Virginia  Co- 
medians.   Jeffersonian  "simplicity."     The  Indian  chief 
Logan.    Governor  Dunmore. 

IV.  Mistaken  Notions  of  Virginia  Life.  —  Colonial  social 
strata  were  many  and  not  so  fixed  as  is  generally  sup- 
posed.    The   frontier   democracy,    from   which   Henry 


46]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

sprang,  has  been  greatly  neglected  in  history  and  fiction. 
The  Scotch-Irish  and  German  settlers  of  the  Valley  of 
Virginia. 

V.  The  Planter  Aristocracy.  —  All  other  classes  have  been 

overshadowed  by  the  planters.  They  entered  the  war 
unwillingly  and  did  not  supply  the  great  leaders.  Wom- 
en. Other  classes. 

VI.  Cooper:  "The  Spy." — Cooper's  conception  of  the  Vir- 
ginia character.    Captain  Jack  Lawton. 

VII.  John  Esten   Cooke. — Cooke's  life  and  conception  of 
fiction.    Cooke's  historical  portrait  of  Virginia  is   as 
charming  and  as  erroneous  as  that  of  his  novels.   Dis- 
cussion of  The  Virginia  Comedians. 

VIII.  Thackeray :  "The  Virginians." — It  has  been  erroneous- 
ly assumed  that  Thackeray  knew  little  or  nothing  about 
Virginia  and  that  his  novel  has  very  little  to  do  with 
Virginia.     Genesis  of  the  novel.    Thackeray's  impres- 
sions of  Virginia  were  very  favorable.     He    received 
some  assistance  from  John  R.  Thompson,  Kennedy,  and 
William  Bradford  Reed.  Cooke's  interview  with  Thack- 
eray (Appleton's  Journal,  n.  s.,  7:248-254).   Did  Ken- 
nedy write  any  of  The  Virginians?    Almost  certainly 
not,  although  Thackeray  clearly  asked  him  to  do  so. 
John  H.  B.  Latrobe  is  responsible  for  the  legend  that 
Kennedy  wrote  the  fourth  chapter  of  the  second  vol- 
ume.    From  Graydon's  Memoirs,  which  Kennedy  lent 
(him,  Thackeray  got  the  story  of  Maria's  marriage  to 
Hagan.    Thackeray's  account  of  the  Lamberts  also  owes 
something  to  Reed's  Life  of  Esther  De  Berdt.     Mrs. 
Burton  Harrison  believes   (see  The  Bookman,  1 :166) 
that  from  Reed  Thackeray  learned  many  details  of  the 
relations  of  aristocratic  Virginia  families,  like  the  Fair- 
faxes and  Carys,  to  their  English  cousins.    Thackeray's 
library  contained  a  number  of  books  dealing  with  Vir- 
ginia and  the  Revolution. 

The  Virginians  is  a  poorly  constructed  novel.   Thack- 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [47 

eray  was  interested  in  Colonial  Virginia  as  a  part  of 
Virginia  life  as  a  foil  to  the  corrupt  life  of  the  English 
eighteenth  century  England,  which  he  loved.  He  uses 
nobility.  Harry  Warrington  is  Virginian  to  the  core. 
The  first  volume  gives  this  young  Virginian's  reaction  to 
English  society  life.  Thackeray's  picture  of  life  in  Vir- 
ginia is  sketchy  but  surprisingly  accurate.  He  did  not 
fall  under  the  influence  of  the  Virginian  tradition  to  any 
great  extent.  The  direct  influence  of  the  novel  has  been 
small,  but  it  did  more  than  any  other  book  to  give 
Virginia  its  place  as  a  classic  background  in  American 
fiction. 


48]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 


CHAPTER  FOUR 

THE   OLD   REGIME 

I.  Historical  Introduction. — While  the  Revolution  made  Vir- 

ginia more  democratic,  it  ruined  most  of  the  planters, 
whose  divided  estates  fell  into  the  hands  of  men  of 
lower  standing.  A  stream  of  emigration  to  the  West 
set  in  which  has  hardly  yet  ceased.  The  Virginian  emi- 
grant as  pictured  in  fiction.  In  the  thirties  slavery, 
which  had  seemed  to  be  dying  out,  again  became  profit- 
able. Slaves  were  sold  to  the  lower  South  at  the  rate 
of  6,000  a  year.  The  Southern  reaction  against  democ- 
racy was  due  to  the  growth  of  the  lower  South,  not  to 
the  influence  of  Scott,  as  has  often  been  said.  Rebuild- 
ing of  the  aristocratic  social  order. 

II.  The  Novelists. — See  Chapter  One  for  a  brief  account  of 

Kennedy,  G.  P.  R.  James,  George  Cary  Eggeston,  Mrs. 
Burton  Harrison,  and  Thomas  Nelson  Page. 

III.  Mistaken  Notions  of  Virginia  Life. — Misconceptions  of 
life  in  ante-bellum  Virginia  are  due  partly  to  the  Aboli- 
tionists, partly  to  post-bellum  Virginia  idealization  of 
the  old  regime  by  Virginians.    The  Virginians  were  not 
dissipated  or  irreligious.     The  charm  of  Virginia  life 
lay  in  its  simplicity,  kindliness,  hospitality,  and  freedom 
from  convention.    Virginian  conservatism  and  hatred  of 
isms  of  all  kinds. 

IV.  Virginia  and  New  England. — The  provincial  Virginian 
and  the  provincial  New  Englander  cherished  many  false 
notions  of  each  other.    New  England  peddlers  and  over- 
seers.   The  few  intelligent  Virginians,  like  William  Wirt 
and    Lucian  Minor,    who  visited    New  England  were 
amazed  to  find  that  Yankees  could  be  kind  and  hospi- 
table.    William  Ellery  Channing  and  Bronson  Alcott 
were  delighted  with  the  Virginia  character  and  mode  of 
living. 


VIRGINIA  LIFK  IN  FICTION  [49 

V.  The  Old  Virginia  Gentleman. — The  Virginia  gentleman 

was  the  inevitable  product  of  the  tobacco  plantation  sys- 
tem based  upon  slavery.  This  explains  his  ability  to 
lead,  his  hospitality,  generosity,  and  provincialism. 
Planter  types  in  fiction.  The  planter's  sons.  Odd  types. 

VI.  The  Virginia  Lady. — Virginia  women  were  not  modern, 
not  intellectual,  but  conservative,  and  thoroughly  femi- 
nine.  The  belle  was  an  institution.    Chivalric  regard 
for  women.    The  matron,  the  keystone  of  the  whole 
economic  system,  was  badly  overworked.    The  "un- 
attached female"  was  extremely  conservative.    Eg- 
gleston's  old  maids. 

VII.  The  Slave. — In    Virginia    slavery    was    attended    with 
fewer  abuses  than  in  the  Gulf  states ;  it  was  a  genuinely 
patriarchal    institution.      The    Abolitionist    legend    of 
slavery.     The  idealized  portrait  of  Page.     Social  dis- 
tinctions among  slaves  were  very  marked.     Slave  types 
in  fiction.   The  literary  use  of  negro  dialect. 

VIII.  The  Lower  Classes. — The  middle-class  farmers  out- 
numbered the  planters  twenty  or  thirty  to  one.     Their 
character.    The  poor  whites.     The  Hoosier  is  a  poor 
white  type.     The  overseer.    The  part  of  all  these  types 
in  fiction  is  very  small. 

IX.  Western  Virginia. — Apart  from  a  few  pages  in  Beverley 
Tucker's  The  Partisan  Leader,  only  Eggleston's  novels 
deal  with  the  Virginia  mountaineer.  Irene  of  the  Moun- 
tains (1909)  and  Westover  of  Wanalah  (1910). 


50]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 


CHAPTER  FIVE 

TH£   CIVIL    WAR 

I.  Historical  Introduction. — There  has  been  some  misconcep- 

tion as  to  Virginia's  part  in  the  Civil  War.  Virginia  was 
very  reluctant  to  secede,  and  yet  her  soil  was  the  chief 
battle-ground ;  in  this  she  resembles  Belgium.  Virginians 
fought  more  wholeheartedly  than  in  the  Revolution.  In 
Virginia  the  war  is  still  a  reality,  not  a  mere  matter  of 
history.  Post-bellum  idealization  of  the  four  epic  years. 
Until  after  1900  no  one  was  permitted  to  tell  the  whole 
truth  about  the  causes  of  the  war. 

II.  The  Virginia  Generals. — Virginia  furnished  half  the  great 

military  leaders  of  the  Confederacy:  the  Lees,  Jackson, 
Joseph  E.  Johnston,  "Jeb"  Stuart,  A.  P.  Hill,  Ewell, 
Pickett,  and  Ashby, — not  to  mention  Scott  and  Thomas 
on  the  Union  side.  Lee  and  Jackson  were  the  chief 
Southern  heroes.  Jackson  was  not  typically  Virginian; 
ihe  was  too  much  the  Puritan  and  too  little' the  Cavalier. 
Lee  much  more  completely  embodied  the  Southern 
ideal.  He  was,  however,  rather  what  the  Virginian  ad- 
mired than  what  he  was.  To  a  certain  extent,  Lee  has 
been  idealized,  like  Washington,  into  a  priggish  abstrac- 
tion. Lee  and  Jackson  as  portrayed  in  Cooke's  novels. 
Turner  Ashby,  "the  Knight  of  the  Valley,"  and  "Jeb" 
Stuart  best  represent  the  romantic  Cavalier  type.  Por- 
traits of  Ashby  and  Stuart  in  Cooke's  Surry  of  Eagle's- 
Nest  and  Eggleston's  The  Master  of  Warlock. 

III.  The  Novelists. — Even  more  than  the  Revolution,  the 
Civil  War  has  furnished  the  epic  of  American  history — 
at  least  for  Virginia.    Whitman  wrote :  "A  great  litera- 
ture will  yet  arise  out  of  the  era  of  those  four  years. 
....    far  more  grand,  in  my  opinion,  to  the  hands 
capable  of  it  than  Homer's  siege  of  Troy,  or  the  French 
wars  to  Shakespeare."  Great  variety  of  the  war  novels. 


VIRGINIA  LIFE;  IN  FICTION  [51 

Few  stand  out,  although  the  average  of  excellence  is 
high.  Two  novels  which  predict  a  civil  war :  Beverley 
Tucker:  The  Partisan  Leader  (1836)  and  John  Beau- 
champ  Jones:  Wild  Southern  Scenes  (1859).  Cooke's 
war  novels  are  disappointing;  his  battle  scenes  and  his- 
torical portraits  are  excellent,  but  Cooke's  type  of  fiction 
was  too  archaic  to  mirror  the  wartime  life  as  a  whole 
Cooke,  however,  was  the  first  to  use  many  situations, 
such  as  the  family  divided  by  the  war  and  the  Northern 
soldier  in  love  with  the  Virginia  girl,  which  later  nov- 
elists employ.  While  Cooke  treated  the  war  as  an  episode 
complete  in  itself,  Page  was  the  first  to  place  his  war 
scenes  against  a  background  of  idyllic  planter  life  be- 
fore the  war  and  a  background  of  planter  poverty  and 
desolation  following  the  war.  Page  pays  more  attention 
to  home  life  and  less  to  battles  than  Cooke.  Excellence 
of  the  short  stories  in  his  In  Old  Virginia  (1887).  Mrs. 
Burton  Harrison's  Crozes  Nest  and  Una  and  King 
David  are  two  of  the  best  short  stories  of  the  Civil  War. 
Of  the  many  novels  by  Northern  writers  which  describe 
the  war  in  Virginia  the  best  is  Albert  Elmer  Hancock's 
Henry  Bourland  (1901).  After  1900  Virginian  novelists 
begin  to  break  with  the  romantic  tradition  and  to  de- 
scribe the  war  as  it  actually  happened.  Ellen  Glasgow's 
The  Battle  Ground  (1902)  and  Lucy  Meacham  Thrus- 
ton's  Called  to  the  Field  (1906)  foreshadow  The  Long 
Roll  (1911)  and  Cease  Firing  (1912)  of  Mary  John- 
ston, who  has  most  successfully  described  the  war. 
Whitman  had  said,  "The  real  war  will  never  get  in  the 
books;"  but  she  has  very  nearly  succeeded.  Forgotten 
details  of  the  Civil  War  in  the  light  of  the  War  with 
Germany:  hysteria,  spies,  "slackers,"  profiteers,  intol- 
erance, hatred,  "strategic  retreats,"  etc. 

IV.  Wartime  Life  in  Virginia. — The  Virginia  planters  made 
excellent  cavalrymen.  The  proportion  of  gentlemen 
among  the  soldiers  has  been  much  exaggerated.  The 
part  of  the  women  is  not  adequately  depicted  by  the 


52)  VIRGINIA  LIFE)  IN  FICTION 

novelists.  The  slaves.  The  poor  whites  are  best  de- 
scribed in  Miss  Glasgow's  The  Battle  Ground  and 
Page's  Little  Darby. 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [53 


CHAPTER  SIX 

MODERN    VIRGINIA 

I.  Decay  of  the  Planter  Families. — Unprecedented  waste  and 

desolation  were  the  aftermath  of  the  war  in  Virginia. 
The  planters  were  unable  to  adjust  themselves  to  new 
methods  of  farming  necessitated  by  emancipation.  Their 
failure  was  seldom  due  to  the  rascality  of  overseers,  as 
Page's  novels  suggest.  Bradley's  Sketches  From  Old 
Virginia  (1897)  gives  a  more  accurate  picture  of  the 
planters  than  Page's  Red  Rock  (1898).  Marse  Dab  and 
Dr.  Gary.  Many  estates  and  homes  abandoned  to  de- 
cay. Thomas  Dabney  as  a  type  of  the  Virginian  plan- 
ter. Modern  Virginian  conservatism  is  due  to  emigra- 
tion of  the  enterprising  element  and  also  perhaps  in  part 
to  the  effect  of  the  war  upon  the  racial  stock. 

II.  The  Reconstruction. — The  Reconstruction  period  in  Vir- 

ginia was  attended  by  few  abuses  like  those  in  Louisiana 
and  South  Carolina,  but  Page  and  other  novelists  make 
no  distinction  between  Virginia  and  these  states.  The 
carpet-bagger  and  the  scalawag,  however,  left  Virginia 
politics  in  a  very  corrupt  condition. 

III.  The  Rise  of  the'  Lo^ver  Classes. — While  practically  all 
the  great  planters  failed,  the  small  farmers  managed  to 
hold  their  own.   Practically  all  the  planters  went  West  or 
North  or  to  Virginia  cities.    Rural  Virginia  is  as  demo- 
cratic as  the  rural  West.    Virginia  social  life  has  under- 
gone a  revolution  since  the  war,  and  it  now  rests  on  the 
same  economic  basis  as  life  in  other  states.     Wealth  is 
now  more  important  than  birth. 

IV.  A  Literary  Revolution. — (See  Chapter  One.)      Under 
the  old  regime  Virginia  left  her  books  to  be  written  by 
outsiders ;  since  the  war  native  Virginians  have  written 
nearly  all  the  novels  describing  Virginia.    Emancipation 


54]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

rendered  speech  and  press  comparatively  free.  Great  va- 
riety of  the  novels;  every  possible  type  represented. 
About  1900  a  marked  change  in  the  tone  of  the  novelists 
begins.  Page  tries  to  keep  pace  with  the  change.  In  Red 
Rock  (1898)  and  Gordon  Keith  (1903)  he  turns  from 
earlier  periods  to  Reconstruction  Virginia,  and  in  John 
Marvel,  Assistant  (1909)  to  contemporary  life,  aban- 
doning his  stock  characters  and  situations  entirely.  Ellen 
Glasgow  as  an  example  of  the  new  type  of  fiction.  Dis- 
cussion of  her  novels.  Mary  Johnston's  Hagar  (1913). 
James  Branch  Cabell's  The  Rivet  in  Grandfather  s 
Neck  (1915). 

V.  Northern  Novelists. — The  Northern  novelists,  at  first  hos- 

tile, become  the  preservers  of  the  Virginia  tradition. 

VI.  Virginia  and  New  York. — The  modern  novelists  are  un- 
able to  keep  away  from  New  York,  no  matter  where 
they  start.     Few  effective  contrasts  in  fiction  of  New 
York  and  Virginia  except  in   F.   Hopkinson   Smith's 
Colonel  Carter  of  Cartersville  (1891)  and  Colonel  Car- 
ter's Christmas  (1903).  Colonel  Carter  is  an  anachron- 
ism, the  old  Virginia  gentleman  unchanged  by  war  and 
Reconstruction,  a  caricature,  like  a  character  out  of 
Dickens. 

VII.  Conclusion. — The  novelists  do  not  successfully  portray 
the  new  type  of  negro.    John  Fox  and  the  Virginia  and 
Kentucky  mountaineers.  Joseph  Herg-esheimer's  Moun- 
tain Blood  (1915).    (See  conclusion  to  Chapter  One.) 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [55 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  following  list  of  works  of  fiction  is  as  complete  as  I 
have  been  able  to  make  it.  So  many  titles  have  been  discov- 
ered by  accident,  (however,  that  I  feel  certain  that  a  consid- 
erable number  have  escaped  me.  The  place  of  publication  is 
usually  omitted  except  in  the  case  of  books  published  before 
the  Civil  War.  In  every  instance  in  which  a  novel  is  included 
which  I  have  not  seen,  the  title  is  marked  with  an  asterisk, 
and  the  source  of  the  title  is  given.  The  more  important 
sources  of  sudh  titles  are  indicated  by  the  following  abbrevia- 
tions : 
BAKER. — Ernest  A.  Baker:  A  Guide  to  Historical  Fiction. 

1914. 

BOOK  REVIEW  DIGEST. — The  Book  Review  Digest.    1905-21. 
DIXSON. — Zella  Allen  Dixson :  The  Comprehensive  Subject 

Index  to  Universal  Prose  Fiction.   1897. 
D.  C.  C. — Drama-tic  Compositions  Copyrighted  in  the  United 

States  1870  to  1916.    1918. 
GRISWOLD,  A.  C.  L. — W.  M.  Griswold :  A  Descriptive  List  of 

Novels  and  Tales  Dealing  with  American  Country  Life. 

1890. 
GRISWOLD  A.  C.  L. — W.  M.  Griswold :  A  Descriptive  List  of 

of  Novels  and  Tales  Dealing  with  the  History  of  North 

America.   1895. 
JOHNSON. — James  Gibson  Johnson  :  Southe'rn  Fiction  Prior 

to  1860 :  An  Attempt  at  a  First-hand  Bibliography.  1909. 
LIB.  SN.  LIT. — The  Library  of  Southern  Literature.    1908- 

13. 

MC!LVVAINE. — Virginia  Fiction  in  the  State  Library.    Pub- 
lished in  the  Richmond  Virginian  beginning  July  1,  1911. 
NAT.  CYCL. — Americans  in  Fiction,  Poetry,  and  the  Drama, 

contained  in  the  Index  volume  of  the  National  Cyclo- 
paedia of  American  Biography. 
NIELD. — Jonathan  Nield:    A  Guide  to  the  Best  Historical 

Novels  and  Tales.    1911. 

PAINTER.— F.  V.  N.  Painter:  Poets  of  Virginia.   1907. 
RODEN. — Robert  F.  Roden:  Later  American  Plays,   1831- 

1900.   1900. 
SWEM. — Earl  G.  Swem :   A  Bibliography  of  Virginia.   Part 

L   1916. 


56]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

WEGELIN  E.  A.  F. — Oscar  Wegelin:  Early  American  Fiction 
1774-1830.  1913. 

WEGELIN  E.  A.  P. — Oscar  Wegelin  :  Early  American  Plays 
1714-1830.  1905. 

WELLS. — B.  W.  Wells:  Southern  Literature  of  the  Year. 
Forum.  June,  1900. 

WHITNEY. — A  Chronological  Index  to  Historical  Fiction. 
Third  edition.  Bulletin  of  the  Boston  Public  Library. 
Volumes  10  and  11. 

c. — Date  of  copyright. 

ANONYMOUS:  Tales  of  an  American  Landlord;  Containing 
Sketches  of  Life  South  of  the  Potomac.  New  York. 
1824.  (Columbia  University  Library.) — *Donald  Adair  ; 
a  Novel.  By  a  Young  Lady  of  Virginia.  1828.  (  Swem. 
Mcllwaine) — *Rose-Hill :  a  Tale  of  the  Old  Dominion. 
By  a  Virginian.  1836.  (Johnson.  Whitney) — Philip 
Randolph :  A  Tale  of  Virginia.  By  Mary  Gertrude.  New 
York.  1845.— *Winderhaus:  A  Tale  of  Richmond  30 
Years  Ago.  1851.  (Johnson)—  *The  Clifford  Family; 
or,  a  Tale  of  the  Old  Dominion.  By  One  of  Her  Daugh- 
ters. New  York.  1852.  (Whitney) — Virginia  in  a 
Novel  Form.  (Published  in  Putnam's  Magazine,  Jan- 
uary to  May,  1853.)—  *The  Olive-branch';  or,  White 
Oak  Farm.  A  Tale  of  Life  in  the  Old  Dominion.  Phila- 
delphia. 1857.  (Whitney) — *Lilias  and  Her  Cousins: 
or,  a  Tale  of  Planter  Life  in  the  Old  Dominion.  By  the 
Author  of  ''Thomas  Jackson."  New  York.  1860.  (Whit- 
ney)— *An  Orphan  of  the  Old  Dominion.  By  Lumina 
Silverdale.  Philadelphia.  1873.  ( Whitney  )—*Doctor 
Phoenix  Skelton ;  or,  The  Man  With  a  Mystery.  By 
Fewi  Stesh.  Fortress  Monroe.  1887.  (Whitney)— 
*Master-man.  1906.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

ALLMOND,  MARCUS  BLAKEY:  Estelle:  An  Idyl  of  Old  Vir- 
ginia and  Other  Poems.  c!884. — ^Fairfax,  My  Lord, 
("an  historical  poem".  Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

ALTSHELER,  JOSEPH  ALEXANDER  :  Before  the  Dawn  :  A  Story 
of  the  Fall  of  Richmond.  1903.— *Scouts  of  Stonewall. 
1915.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest)—  *Star  of  Gettysburg:  A  Story 
of  Southern  High  Tide.  1915.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest)— 
*  Shades  of  the  Wilderness :  A  Story  of  Lee's  Great 
Stand.  1916.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

ASHTON,  JOHN  :  The  Adventures  and  Discourses  of  Captain 
lohn  Smith,  sometime  President  of  Virginia,  and  Ad- 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [57 

miral  of  New  England.  .  .  .  1883.  (A  biography  in  the 
form  of  fiction.) 

BAGBY,  GEORGE  WILLIAM  :  For  Virginians  Only.  What  I  Did 
with  my  Fifty  Millions.  By  Moses  Adams.  .  .  .  1874. 

BAKER,  WILLIAM  MUMFORD:  The  Virginians  in  Texas:  A 
Story  for  Young  Old  Folks  and  Old  Young  Folks.  1878. 
(First  published  in  Harpers  Magazine,  December, 
1866,  to  June,  1867.) 

BALDWIN,  JOSEPH  GLOVER:  The  Flush  Times  of  Alabama 
and  Mississippi :  A  Series  of  Sketches.  New  York.  1853. 
(New  York  Public  Library.) 

BALDWIN,  LYDIA  WOOD:  A  Yankee  School-Teacher  in  Vir- 
ginia: A  Tale  of  the  Old  Dominion  in  the  Transition 
State.  1884. 

BARBE,  WAITMAN  :  In  the  Virginias.  1896.  (A  collection  of 
short  stories.) 

BARKER,  JAMES  NELSON  :  The  Indian  Princess  or,  La  Belle 
Sauvage.  An  Operatic  Melo-drame  in  Three  Acts.  1808. 
(Reprinted  in  Moses:  Representative  Plays  by  Ameri- 
can Dramatists.) 

BARNES,  CHARLOTTE  M.  S.  (later  Mrs.  Conner)  :  The  For- 
est Princess,  or  Two  Centuries  Ago.  An  Historical  Play 
in  Three  Parts.  (Published  in  her  Plays,  Prose,  and 
Poetry.  Philadelphia.  1848.) 

BARNES,  JAMES:  The  Son  of  Light  Horse  Harry.  1904.  (A 
juvenile  story  of  Robert  E.  Lee.) 

BARNETT,  MORRIS:  *  Yankee  Peddler;  or,  Old  Times  in  Vir- 
ginia. 1841.  (Roden.) 

BARNUM,  MRS.  FRANCES  COLTRTENAY  (BAYLOR)  :  Behind  the 
Blue  Ridge:  A  Homely  Narrative.  1887. — A  Shocking 
Example  and  Other  Sketches.  1889.— Claudia  Hyde. 
1895. 

HARTLEY,  JAMES  Avis:  Pocahontas.  (Published  in  his  Lays 
of  Ancient  Virginia,  and  Other  Poems.  Richmond.  1855. 
(Columbia  University  Library.) 

BEHN,  MRS.  APHRA  :  The  Widow  Ranter  ;  or,  The  History  of 
Bacon  in  Virginia.  Acted  in  1690.  (Reprinted  in  Mon- 
tague Summers:  Works  of  Aphra  Behn.} 

BENNETT,  EMERSON  :  The  Fair  Rebel :  A  Tale  of  Colonial 
Times.  Cincinnati.  c!853.— The  Bride  of  the  Wilder- 
ness. Philadelphia.  c!854.  (Both  in  the  New  York 
Public  Library.) 


58]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

BENNETT,  JOHANNAS:  *La  Belle  San  Antone.  1910.  (A  Vir- 
ginian in  Texas.)  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

BENSON,  BLACKWOOD  KETCHAM:  Who  Goes  There?  The 
Story  of  a  Spy  in  the  Civil  War.  1900— Bayard's 
Courier:  A  Story  of  Love  and  Adventure  in  the  Cav- 
alry Campaigns.  1902. — Old  Squire :  The  Romance  of 
a  Black  Virginian.  1903. 

BiERCE,  AMBROSE:  A  Horseman  in  the  Sky.  (A  short  story 
of  the  Civil  War  found  in  In  the  Midst  of  Life.  1891.) 

BLAIR,  LOUISA  COLEMAN,  and  WILLIAMS,  ROBERT  FIND- 
LATER  :  Nathaniel  Bacon :  A  Play  in  Four  Acts.  1907. 

BLANCHARD,  AMY  E. :  The  Four  Corners.  1906.  (Juvenile.) 

BLOUNDELLE-BURTON,  J.  E. :  *The  Land  of  Bondage.  1904. 
(Baker.) 

BOONE,  HENRY  BURNHAM,  and  BROWN,  KENNETH  :  East- 
over  Court  House.  1901.— The  Redfields  Succession. 
1903. 

BOSHER,  MRS.  KATE  LANGLEY:  *Bobbie.  1899.  (Swem.  Mc- 
Ilwaine)— Mary  Cary :  "Frequently  Martha."  1910.— 
*Miss  Gibbie  Gault.  1911.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest)— The 
Man  in  Lonely  Land.  1912.— Kitty  Canary.  1918.— His 
Friend,  Miss  McFarlane.  1919. 

BOWEN,  LITTLETON  P. :  The  Days  of  Makemie ;  or,  The  Vine 
Planted.  A.  D.  1680-1708.  c!885. 

BouvE,  PAULINE  CARRINGTON  :  *Their  Shadows  Before. 
circa  1900.  (Wells.) 

BOWYER,  JAMES  T. :  The  Witch  of  Jamestown :  A  Story  of 
Colonial  Virginia.  1890. 

BRADLEY,  ARTHUR  GRANVILLE:  The  Old  Virginia  Gentle- 
man. (Macmillan's  Magazine,  48:131-140) — Sketches 
from  Old  Virginia.  1897. — Other  Days:  Recollections 
of  Rural  England  and  Old  Virginia,  1860-1880.  1913. 
(None  of  these  are  strictly  to  be  classed  as  fiction.) 

BRADLEY,  MARY  EMILY  :  *Douglas  Farm ;  a  Juvenile  Story 
of  Life  in  Virginia.  1857.  (Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

BRADY,  CYRUS  TOWNSEND  :  The  Patriots :  The  Story  of  Lee 
and  the  Last  Hope.  1906. 

BRAINERD,  ELEANOR  (HOYT)  :  *For  Love  of  Mary  Ellen. 
1912.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

BREBNER,  PERCY  J. :  *A  Gentleman  of  Virginia.  1910. 
(Nield.) 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [59 

BRECKINRIDGE,  MRS.  JULIA  ANTHONY  :  *In  Dead  Earnest. 
1878.  (Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 

BROUGHAM,  JOHN:  An  Original  Aboriginal  Erratic  Operatic 
Semi-Civilized  and  Demi- Savage  Extravaganza,  being  a 
Per- Version  of  Ye  Trewe  and  Wonderfulle  Hystorie  of 
Ye  Renownned  Princesse,  PO-CA-HON-TAS :  or,  The 
Gentle  Savage.  Acted  in  1855.  (New  York  Public  Li- 
brary.) 

BRUCE,  PHILIP  ALEXANDER:  Pocahontas  and  Other  Son- 
nets. 1912. 

BRUCE,  WILLIAM  CABELL  :  Below  the  James :  A  Plantation 
Sketch.  1918. 

BRYAN,  EMMA  LYON:  1860-1865:  A  Romance  of  the  Val- 
ley of  Virginia.  c!892. 

BUCHAN,  JOHN  :  Salute  to  Adventurers.   1917. 

BUCKLEY,  R.  WALLACE:  *The  Last  of  the  Houghtons. 
1907.  (Baker.) 

BURGWYN,  COLLINSON  PlERREPONT  EDWARDS  I  *The  HugUC- 

not  Lovers :  A  Tale  of  the  Old  Dominion.  1889.  (Swem. 
Whitney.) 

BUTT,  MARTHA  HAINES  (later  Mrs.  Bennett)  :  Antifanati- 
cism:  A  Tale  of  the  South.  Philadelphia.  1853.  (Are- 
ply  to  Mrs.  Stowe.)  (New  York  Public  Library.) 

BUTTERWORTH,  HEzEKiAH :  The  Boys  of  Greenway  Court : 
A  Tale  of  the  Early  Days  of  Washington.  1893.— In  the 
Days  of  Jefferson :  Or,  The  Six  Golden  Horseshoes :  A 
Tale  of  Republican  Simplicity.  c!900. 

BYERS,  SAMUEL  H.  M. :  *Pocahontas,  a  Melodrama  in  5 
Acts.  1875.  (D.C.C.) 

CABELL,  JAMES  BRANCH  :  The  Rivet  in  Grandfather's  Neck : 
A  Comedy  of  Limitations.  1915. 

CALDWELL,  W.  W. :    Donald    McElroy,    Scotch    Irishman. 

1919. 
CAMPBELL,      GABRIELLE     MARGARET     VERE      ("Marjorie 

Bowen")  :   The  Soldier  from  Virginia.    1912.    (A  story 

of  George  Washington.) 
CARNAHAN,  LOUISE:    *Little  Doctor  Victoria,    circa  1900. 

(Juvenile)    (Wells). 
CARPENTER,  WILLIAM  H. :    *Ruth  Emsley,    the  Betrothed 

Maiden :  A  Tale  of  the  Virginia  Massacre.  1850.   (Dix- 

son.  Whitney.) 


60]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

CARR,  KENT:   *The  Boy  Bondsman.    1910.    (Nield.) 

CARUTHERS,  WILLIAM  ALEXANDER:  The  Kentuckian  in  New 
York ;  or,  The  Adventures  of  Three  Southerns.  By  a 
Virginian.  New  York.  1834. — The  Cavaliers  of  Vir- 
ginia, or  The  Recluse  of  Jamestown.  An  Historical  Ro- 
mance of  the  Old  Dominion.  New  York.  1834-35.— The 
Knights  of  the  Horse-Shoe;  a  Traditionary  Tale  of 
the  Cocked  Hat  Gentry  in  the  Old  Dominion.  Wetump- 
ka,  Alabama.  1845.  Reissued  in  New  York.  1882  and 
1909.  (New  York  Public  Library.) 

CARTER,  BERNARD  M. :  *Pocahontas.  (Included  in  A  Med- 
ley: A  Poefm-.  London.  1823.)  (Painter.) 

CARTER,  ST.  LEGER  L. :  *The  Land  of  Powhatan.  By  a  Vir- 
ginian. 1821.  (Swem.) 

CASTLEMAN,  VIRGINIA  CARTER  :  Roger  of  Fairfield.  1906. — 
*Pocahontas;  a  Poem.  c!907.  (Swem.) 

CHAPIN,  ANNA  ALICE:  *Under  Trail.  1912.  (Bk.  Rev. 
Digest). — The  Eagle's  Mate.  1914. — Mountain  Mad- 
ness. c!917. 

CHAPMAN,  GEORGE;  JONSON,  BEN;  and  MARSTON,  JOHN: 
Eastward  Hoe.  .  .  .  London.  1605. 

CHAPMAN,  GEORGE:  The  Memorable  Maske  of  the  Two 
Honourable  Houses  or  Innes  of  Court :  the  Middle  Tem- 
ple and  Lvncolns  Inne.  As  it  was  performed  before  the 
King,  at  Whitehall  on  Shroue  Munday  at  night ;  being 
the  15.  of  February.  1613.  At  the  Princely  celebration 
of  the  most  Royall  Nyptialls  of  the  Palsgrave,  and  his 
thrice  gratious  Princesse  Elizabeth.  &c.  .  .  .  Inuented, 
and  fashioned,  with  the  ground,  and  speciall  structure 
of  the  whole  worke,  By  our  Kingdomes  most  Art  full  and 
Ingenious  Architect,  Innigo  lones.  Supplied,  Aplied, 
Digested,  and  written  by  Geo:  Chapman.  .  .  . 

CHRISTIAN,  WILLIAM  ASBURY  :  *Mara'h :  A  Story  of  Old 
Virginia.  1903.  (Swam.) 

CLAYTOR,  GRAHAM  :  Pleasant  Waters:  A  Story  of  Southern 
Life  and  Character.  1888.™ Wheat  and  Tares.  1889. 

COBB,  SYLVANUS,  JR.  :  *Orlando  Chester.  New  edition.  1886. 
(Griswold  TL  X.  A.) 

CONWAY,  MONCURE  DANIEL  :  Pine  and  Palm.  1887. — *  Pris- 
ons of  Air.  c!891.  (Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 

COOKE,  JOHN  FSTEN:  Leather  Stocking  and  Silk;  or, 
Hunter  John  Myers  and  His  Times.  A  Story  of  the  Val- 


VIRGINIA  UFE  IN  FICTION  [61 

ley  of  Virginia.  New  York.  1854. — The  Virginia  Comed- 
ians; or,  Old  Days  in  the  Old  Dominion.  New  York. 
1854.— The  Youth  of  Jefferson ;  or,  A  Chronicle  of  Col- 
lege Scrapes  at  Williamsburg,  in  Virginia,  A.  D.  1764. 
New  York.  1854.— Ellie :  or,  The  Human  Comedy. 
Richmond.  1855. — The  Last  of  the  Foresters;  or,  Hu- 
mors on  the  Border;  a  Story  of  the  Old  Virginia  Fron- 
tier. New  York.  1856. — Henry  St.  John,  Gentleman,  of 
"Flower  of  Hundreds,"  In  the  County  of  Prince  George, 
Virginia:  A  Tale  of  1774-75.  New  York.  1859.— Surry 
of  Eagle's-Nest ;  or,  The  Memoirs  of  a  Staff-officer 
Serving  m  Virginia.  New  York.  1866. — Fairfax;  or, 
The  Master  of  Greenway  Court.  A  Chronicle  of  the 
Valley  of  the  Shenandoah.  New  York.  1868. — Mohun : 
A  Novel.  New  York.  1869.— Hilt  to  Hilt ;  or,  Days  and 
Nights  in  the  Shenandoah  in  the  Autumn  of  1864.  New- 
York.  1869.— Gaymount :  A  Novel.  New  York.  1870. 
—Doctor  Vandyke :  A  Novel.  New  York.  1872.— Pret- 
ty Mrs.  Gaston,  and  Other  Stories.  New  York.  c!874. 
— Justin  Harley :  A  Romance  of  Old  Virginia.  Phila- 
delphia. 1875. — Canolles :  The  Fortunes  of  a  Partisan 
of  '81.  Detroit.  1877.— Mr.  Grantley's  Idea.  New  York. 
c!879. — The  Virginia  Bohemians :  A  Novel.  New  York. 
1880.— My  Lady  Pokahontas :  A  True  Relation  of  Vir- 
ginia. Writ  by  Anas  Todkill,  Puritan  and  Pilgrim.  Bos- 
ton. 1885.  (For  a  much  more  complete  bibliography  of 
Cooke,  see  John  O.  Beaty :  John  Esteii  Cooke:  Vir- 
ginian, shortly  to  be  published. ) 

COOPER,  JAMES  FENIMORE  :  The  Spy  :  A  Tale  of  the  Neutral 
Ground.  1821. 

CUSHING,  MRS.  ELIZA  LANESFORD  (FOSTER)  *Yorktown; 
an  Historical  Romance.  Boston.  1826.  (  Svvem.  Whit- 
ney.) 

CUSTIS,  GEORGE  WASHINGTON  PARKE  :  Pocahontas ;  or,  The 
Settlers  of  Virginia,  a  National  Drama,  in  Three  Acts. 
....  Philadelphia.  1830.  (Reprinted  in  Quinn :  Rep- 
resentative American  Plays.) 

DABNEY,  VIRGINIUS  :  The  Story  of  Don  Miff,  as  Told  by  His 
Friend  John  Bouche  Whacker.  A  Symphony  of  Life. 
1886.— -*Gold  That  Did  Not  Glitter.  1889.  (Swem.  Mc- 
Ilwaine.) 

DAGNALL,  JOHN  M. :  Daisy  Swain,  the  Flower  of  Shenan- 
doah. A  Tale  of  the  Rebellion.  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.  1865. 
(New  York  Public  Library.) 


62]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

DAINGERFIELD,  NETTIE;  GRAY  :  Frescati :  A  Page  from  Vir- 
ginia History.  1909. 

DAVIS,  JOHN:  Travels  of  Four  Years  and  a  Half  in  the 
United  States.  .  .  .  London.  1803.  (Contains  Davis's 
first  version  of  the  Pocahontas  story.)  Reprinted,  New 
York,  1909,  edited  by  A.  J.  Morrison. — Captain  Smith, 
and  Princess  Pocahontas,  an  Indian  Tale.  Philadelphia. 
1805.  (This  is  Davis's  second  version  of  the  Pocahon- 
tas story;  it  is  not  a  condensation  of  The  First  Settlers 
of  Virginia.) — The  First  Settlers  of  Virginia,  An  His- 
torical Novel,  Exhibiting  a  View  of  the  Rise  and  Prog- 
ress of  the  Colony  at  Jamestown,  a  Picture  of  Indian 
Manners,  the  Countenance  of  the  Country,  and  its  Nat- 
ural Productions.  The  Second  Edition  Considerably  En- 
larged. New  York.  .  .  .  1806.  (Some  copies  bear  the 
date  1805.  All  are  labeled  "Second  Edition",  Davis  ap- 
parently considering  Captain  Smith  and  Princess  Poca- 
hontas as  the  first  edition.)  (New  York  Public  Library. 
Columbia  University  Library.) 

DAVIS,  MARY  DIUGUID:  *She  Waited  Patiently.  1900. 
(Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 

DAVIS,  REBECCA  HARDING:  *Kent  Hampden.  1892.  (Swem. 
Mcllwaine.) 

DAY,  MRS.  W.  C. :    *Virginia.    Prehistoric  and  Antebellum. 

1889.    (Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 
DEBENHAM,  MARY  H.:   *In  the  Western  Woods.  1909.  (In 

A  Fair  Haven  and  Other  Stories.)    (Nield.) 

DEFOE,  DANIEL  :  The  Fortunes  and  Misfortunes  of  the  fa- 
mous Moll  Flanders.  .  .  .  eight  years  a  transported 
Felon  in  Virginia.  .  .  .  1722.— The  History  and  Re- 
markable Life  of  the  Truly  Honourable  Colonel  Jacque 
commonly  call'd  Colonel  Jack.  .  .  .  kidnapped  to  Vir- 
ginia. .  .  .  1722. 

DE  HAVEN,  AUBREY:    *The  Scarlet  Cloak.  1907.    (Baker.) 

DELANO,  EDITH  BARNARD:  *June.  1916.    (Bk.  Rev.  Digest) 

*When  Carey  Came  to  Town.   1916.   (Bk.  Rev.  Digest) 

—Two  Alike.    1918. 

DE  LEON,  T.  COOPER  :  *Crag-Nest.   1910.    (Nield.) 
DIXON,  THOMAS  :  The  Southerner  :  A  Romance  of  the  Real 

Lincoln.    1913. — The  Victim:    A  Romance  of  the  Real 

Jefferson  Davis.    1914. 


VIRGINIA  LIFE)  IN  FICTION  [63 

DODDRIDGE,  JOSEPH  :  Logan,  The  Last  of  the  Race  of  Shi- 
kellemus,  Chief  of  the  Cayuga  Nation.  A  Dramat'c 
Piece.  Buffaloe  Creeke,  Brooke  Country,  Va.  1823. 
Reprinted  in  Cincinnati.  1868.  (This  volume  also  in- 
cludes The  Dialogue  of  the  Backwoodsman  and  the 
Dandy.)  (New  York  Public  Library.) 

DOOLEY,  MRS.  JAMES  :  *Dem  Good  Ole  Times.  1906.  (Mc- 
Ilwaine.) 

DUGGAN,  MRS.  JANIE  PRITCHARD:  *Judith:  A  Story  of 
Richmond.  1897.  (Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

DUNN,  BYRON  ARCHIBALD:  *The  Boy  Scouts  of  the  She- 
nandoah.  1917.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

DUPUY,  ELIZA  ANN  :  The  Huguenot  Exiles ;  or,  The  Times 
of  Louis  XIV.  A  Historical  Novel.  New  York.  1856. 
(New  York  Society  Library.) 

DYE,  EVA  EMERY  :  The  Conquest :  The  True  Story  of  Lewis 
and  Clark.  1902. 

EASTMAN,  MRS.  MARY  H. :  Aunt  Phillis's  Cabin;  or,  South- 
ern Life  As  It  Is.  Philadelphia.  1852.  (A  reply  to  Mrs. 
Stowe.)  (New  York  Public  Library.) 

EATON,  WALTER  PRITCHARD  :  *The  Boy  Scouts  in  the  Dis- 
mal Swamp.  1914.  (Juvenile.)  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

EDMONDS,  FRED.  :  *Pocahontas ;  Comic  Operetta  in  2  Acts. 
....  1916.  (D.  C.  C.) 

EGGLESTON,  GEORGE  CARY  :  A  Man  of  Honor.  c!873. — South- 
ern Soldier  Stories.  1898. — *Camp  Venture :  A  Story 
of  the  Virginia  Mountains.  1901.  (Juvenile)  (Swem). 
— Dorothy  South :  A  Love  Story  of  Virginia  Just  Be- 
fore the  War.  1902.— The  Master  of  Warlock :  A  Vir- 
ginia War  Story.  1903.— Evelyn  Byrd.  1904.— A  Cap- 
tain in  the  Ranks :  A  Romance  of  Affairs.  1904. — Love 
Is  the  Sum  of  It  All.  1907.— The  Warrens  of  Virginia: 

A  Novel Founded  on  the  Play  of  William  C. 

de  Mille.  c!908. — Two  Gentlemen  of  Virginia :  A  Novel 
of  the  Old  Regime  in  the  Old  Dominion.  1908.— Irene 
of  the  Mountains :  A  Romance  of  Old  Virginia.  1909. 
— Westover  of  Wanalah :  A  Story  of  Love  and  Life  in 
Old  Virginia.  1910. 

EGGLKSTON,  JOSEPH  WILLIAM  :  *Tuckahoe;  an  Old-fashion- 
ed Story  of  an  Old-fashioned  People.  1903.  (Swem. 
Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 


64]  VIRGINIA  LIFE:  IN  FICTION 

ELLIS,  EDWARD  SYLVESTER:  ^Uncrowning  a  King.  1896. 
(Juvenile)  (Baker).  —  *The  Cromwell  of  Virginia. 
1904.  (Juvenile)  (  Baker)— *  The  Last  Emperor  of  the 
Old  Dominion.  1904.  (Juvenile)  (Baker)  —  *  Storm 
Mountain.  (Dixson.  Whitney.) 

ENGLISH,  THOMAS  DUNN:  The  Burning  of  Jamestown. 
(This  poem  is  reprinted  in  i>.  E.  Stevenson:  Poems  of 
American  History. ) 

EWELL,  ALICE  MAUDE  :   A  White  Guard  to  Satan 

c!900.  (A  story  of  Bacon's  Rebellion.)— *  A  Long  Time 
Ago  in  Virginia  and  Maryland,  with  a  Glimpse  of  Old 
England.  1907.  (Swem.  Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

EYSTER,  NELLIE  BLESSING  :   *  A  Colonial  Boy.  1889.    (Whit- 
ney.  Griswold  H.  N.  A.) 
FLEMING,  MAY  AGNES:  The  Virginia  Heiress.   1888. 

FLOYD,  NICHOLAS  JACKSON  :  *Thorns  in  the  Flesh.  A  Ro- 
mance of  the  Wrar  and  Ku  Klux  Periods.  A  Voice  of 
Vindication  from  the  South  in  Answer  to  A  Fool's 
Errand  and  Other  Slanders.  1885.  (Swem.  Mcllwaine). 
— *The  Last  of  the  Cavaliers ;  or,  The  Phantom  Peril. 
A  Historical  Romance  Dealing  with  the  Cause  and  Con- 
duct of  the  War  between  the  Sections  of  the  American 
Union.  c!904.  (Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 

FORRESTER,  IZOLA  L. :  *Polly  Page  Ranch  Club.  1911.  (Vir. 
ginia  Girls  in  Wyoming. )  ( Bk.  Rev.  Digest. ) 

FRASER,  MARY  CRAWFORD  (Mrs.  Hugh  Eraser):  In  the 
Shadow  of  the  Lord.  1906.  (A  Story  of  Washington's 
Mother. ) 

FREEMAN,  MARY  WILKINS  :  The  Heart's  Highway :  A  Ro- 
mance of  Virginia  in  the  Seventeenth  Century.  c!900. 

FULLER,  HULBERT  :  Vivian  of  Virginia.  .  .  .  1897.  (A  Story 
of  Bacon's  Rebellion.) 

GARBER,  VIRGINIA  ARMISTEAD:  Pocahontas.  c!906.  (Verse.) 

GARDENER,  HELEN  HAMILTON  (later  Mrs.  Smart)  :  An  Un- 
official Patriot.  c!894.  (Dramatized  as  The  Rev.  Grif- 
fith Davenport. ) 

GILLETTE,  WILLIAM:  Secret  Service:  A  Drama  of  "The 
Southern  Confederacy."  First  performed  in  1895. 
(Printed  in  Quinn:  Representative  American  Plays.) 

GLASGOW,  ELLEN  ANDERSON  GHOLSON  :  The  Descendant :  A 
Novel.  1897.— Phases  of  an  Inferior  Planet.  1898.— 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [65 

The  Voice  of  the  People.  1900.— The  Battle  Ground. 
1902. — The  Deliverance:  A  Romance  of  the  Virginia 
Tobacco  Fields.  1904.— The  Wheel  of  Life.  1906.— 
The  Ancient  Law.  1908. — The  Romance  of  a  Plain  Man. 
1909.  __  The  Miller  of  Old  Church.  1911.  —  Virginia. 
1913. — Life  and  Gabriella :  The  Story  of  a  Woman's 
Courage.  1916. — Dare's  Gift.  (A  short  story  published 
in  Harper's  Magazine,  February  and  March,  1917.)  — 
The  Builders.  1919. 

GOODE,  KATE  TUCKER:  A  Princess  of  Virginia:  A  Drama. 
(Published  in  Lippincott's  Magazine,  June,  1907.) 

GOODWIN,  MAUD  WILDER  :  The  Head  of  a  Hundred :  Being 
An  Account  of  Certain  Passages  in  the  Life  of  Humph- 
rey Huntoon  Esq'r  Sometyme  an  Officer  in  the  Colony 
of  Virginia.  .  .  .  c!895. — White  Aprons  :  A  Romance 
of  Bacon's  Rebellion  :  Virginia,  1876.  c!896.— Sir  Chris- 
topher. .  .  .  1901.  (Virginia  and  Maryland  circa 
1644.) 

GORDON,  ARMISTEAD  CHURCHILL,  and,  PAGE,  THOMAS  NEL- 
SON :  Befo'  de  War.  1888.  (Poems  in  negro  dialect.) 

GORDON,  ARMISTEAD  CHURCHILL:  *The  Gift  of  the  Morn- 
ing Star  :  A  Story  of  Sherando.  1905.  (Swem.  Bk.  Rev. 
Digest). — Robin  Aroon :  A  Comedy  of  Manners.  1908. 
— Maje :  A  Love  Story.  1914. — Ommirandy.  Plantation 
Life  at  Kingsmill.  1917.— *Envion  and  Other  Tales  of 
Old  and  New  Virginia.  (Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

HALL,  GRANVILLE  DAVISSON  :  Daughter  of  the  Elm  :  A  Tale 
of  Western  Virginia  Before  the  War.  1899. 

HANCOCK,  ALBERT  ELMER:  Henry  Bourland :  The  Passing 
of  the  Cavalier.  1901. 

HANCOCK,  ELIZABETH  HAZLEWOOD  (see  also  Neale,  Wal- 
ter) :  *Betty  Pembroke.  1907.  (Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

HARLAN,  CALEB  :  Ida  Randolph  of  Virginia.  A  Historical 
Novel  in  Verse.  Second  edition.  1890. 

11. \RI.AND,  MARION  (Mrs.  Mary  Virginia  Hawes  Terhune)  : 
Alone.  c!854.— *The  Hidden  Path.  1855.  (Mcllwaine). 
Nemesis.  I860.— Sunnybank.  1866.— *  At  Last.  1876. 
(Mcllwaine). — Judith:  A  Chronicle  of  Old  Virginia. 
1884.— His  Great  Self.  c!891.  (A  story  of  William 
Byrd).— An  Old-Field  School  Girl.  1897.— *In  Our 
County:  Stories  of  Old  Virginia  Life.  190L  (Swem.) 
— *The  Carringtons  of  High  Hill.  1919.— *When 


66]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

Grandmamma  was  New :  The  Story  of  a  Virginia  Girl- 
hood in  the  Forties. — *When  Grandmamma  Was  Four- 
teen. (The  last  three  titles  are  taken  from  advertise- 
ments.) 

HARRISON,  CONSTANCE  GARY  (Mrs.  Burton  Harrison)  :  Bel- 
haven  Tales ;  Crow's  Nest ;  Una  and  King  David.  1892. 
— Flower  de  Hundred :  The  Story  of  a  Virginia  Planta- 
tion. 1890.— *In  Cherrycote.  1890.  (In  An  Edelweiss 
of  the  Sierras)  (Mcllwaine).  —  Sweet  Bells  out  of 
Tune.  1893.— A  Virginia  Cousin.  1895.— A  Son  of  the 
Old  Dominion.  1897.— Winwood's  Luck.  (A  short  story 
published  in  Lippincott's  Magazine,  September,  1901.) 
—The  Carlyles:  A  Story  of  the  Fall  of  the  Confede- 
racy. 1905.— The  Count  and  the  Congressman.  c!908. 
— ^Thirteen  at  Table.  1897.  (Mcllwaine.)— *Worros- 
quoyacke.  1897.  (Mcllwaine.) 

HARRISON,  HENRY  SYDNOR:  Queed.  1911. — V.  V.'s  Eyes. 
1913.— Angela's  Business.  1915. 

HART,  CHARLES  B. ;  and  PAULI,  A. :  *Pocahontas,  the  Indian 
Queen,  a  comic  opera  in  2  acts.  .  .  .  1886.  (D.  C.  C.) 

HART,  JEROME  ALFRED:  *  Vigilante  Girl.  1910.  (Bk.  Rev. 
Digest.) 

HATCHETT,  MAMIE  LAMKIN:  Myra:  A  Novel.   1884. 

HAW,  MARY  JANE  :  The  Beechwood  Tragedy :  A  Tale  of  the 
Chickahominy.  1889.  (An  enlarged  edition  of  *The 
Rivals:  A  Chickahominy  Story.  1863.)  (New  York 
Public  Library.) 

HAYS,  INDA  BARTON  :  *Dixie  Dolls  and  Other  Tales.  1904. 
(Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 

HOUSTON,  A.  C. :  *Hugh  Harrison.  1890.  (The  story  of  a 
mulatto  boy.)  (Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 

HAZELTON,  G.  C.,  JR.  :  *The  Raven :  The  Love-Story  of 
Edgar  Allan  Poe.  1909.  (Nield.) 

HEATH,  JAMES  EWELL  :  *  Edge-Hill ;  or,  The  Family  of  the 
Fitzroyals.  1828.  (Johnson.  Swem.  Mcllwaine.)— 
Whigs  and  Democrats ;  or,  Love  of  No  Politics.  A  Com- 
edy in  3  Acts.  Richmond.  1839.  (New  York  Public 
Library.) 

HELLER,  ROBLEY  EUGENE:  *Appomattox:  A  Drama  in  4 
Acts.  1899.  (D.  C.  C.) 

HENDRICK,  WELLAND:  *Pocahontas:  A  Burlesque  Operetta 
in  2  Acts.  1886.  (D.  C.  C.) 


VIRGINIA  LIFE)  IN  FICTION  [67 

HENRY,  O.  (William  Sydney  Porter)  :  Options.  1908.  (Two 
Virginia  Stories,  Best-Seller  and  Thimble,  Thimble,  are 
found  in  this  volume.) 

HENTY,  G.  A. :  With  Lee  in  Virginia :  A  Story  of  the  Amer- 
ican Civil  War.  1889.  (Juvenile.) 

HERBERT,  HENRY  W.  ("Frank  Forester")  :  *Quorndon 
Hounds;  or,  A  Virginian  at  Melton  Mowbray.  Phila- 
delphia. 1856.  (Whitney). 

HERGES HEI HER,  JOSEPH  :  Mountain  Blood.  1915. 

HILDRETH,  RICHARD:  *The  Slave;  or,  The  Memoirs  of 
Archy  Moore.  Boston.  1836.  (Whitney.) 

HILLER,  THOMAS  OLIVER  PRESCOTT  :  *Pocahontas ;  or,  The 
Founding  of  Virginia.  A  Poem.  In  Three  Cantos.  Lon- 
don. 1865.  (Swem.) 

HOLDEN,  JOHN  JARVIS:  A  Woman's  Pity.  (This  poem  on 
Pocahontas  is  found  in  Nellie  U.  Wellington :  Ameri- 
can History  by  American  Poets.) 

HOARE,  E.  N. :  *Paths  in  the  Great  Waters.  .  .  .  1883. 
(Whitney.) 

HOPE,  JAMES  BARRON  :  Arms  and  the  Man :  A  Metrical  Ad- 
dress Recited  on  the  One  Hundredth  Anniversary  (Oc- 
tober 19th,  1881),  of  the  Surrender  of  Lord  Cornwallis 
at  Yorktown.  .  .  .  Norfolk,  Va.  1882. 

HOPKINS,  SAMUEL  :  The  Youth  of  the  Old  Dominion.  Bos- 
ton. 1856.  (New  York  Public  Library.) 

HORSLEY,  REGINALD:  *Stonewall's  Scout:  A  Story  of  the 
American  Civil  War.  1896.  (Baker.) 

HOUGH,  EMERSON:  *Way  of  a  Man.  1907.  (Bk.  Rev. 
Digest.) 

HOUSSAYE,  MME.  S.  DE  LA:  *La  Maride  Marguerite.  (Lib. 
Sn.  Lit.) 

HOWARD,  BRONSON  :  Shenandoah :  A  Military  Comedy  in 
Four  Acts.  (First  performed  in  1889.  Novelized  by  Hen- 
ry Tyrrell,  q.  v.) 

HUNTER,  MRS.  MARTHA  FEATON  :  *The  Clifford  Family ;  or, 
A  Tale  of  the  Old  Dominion.  1852.  (Swem.) 

INGRAHAM,  J.  H. :  *The  Bold  Insurgent.  (In  The  Young 
Artist  and  The  Bold  Insurgent.  1846.)  (Swem.) 


68]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

IRON,  N.  C. :  *Hearts  Forever;  or,  The  Old  Dominion  Bat- 
tle-grounds. A  Tale  of  1782.  New  York.  1866.  (Whit- 
ney.) 

[AMES,  GEORGE  PAYNE  RAINSFORD:  The  Old  Dominion;  or, 
A  Tale  of  Virginia.  1856. 

JETT,  JAMES:   *A  Virginia  Tragedy.    (Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

JOHNSTON,  MARY:  Prisoners  of  Hope:  A  Tale  of  Colonial 
Virginia.  1898.  (Published  in  England  under  the  title 
of  The  Old  Dominion)— To  Have  and  To  Hold.  1899. 
(Published  in  England  under  the  title  of  By  Order  of 
the  Company.  Eirst  appeared  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
June,  1899,  to  December,  1899).— Audrey.  1902.  (First 
appeared  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly.  May,  1901,  to  Febru- 
ary, 1902).— Lewis  Rand,  1908.— The  Long  Roll.  1911. 
Cease  Firing.  1912.— Hagar.  1913. 

JONES,  JOHN  BEAUCHAMP:  Wild  Southern  Scenes:  A  Tale 
of  Disunion!  and  Border  War!  Philadelphia.  c!859. 
(New  York  Public  Library.) 

KALER,  J.  O. :  *With  Lafayette  at  Yorktown.  1904.  (Juve- 
nile) (Baker). 

KENNEDY,  JOHN  PENDLETON  :  Swallow  Barn,  or  A  Sojourn 
in  the  Old  Dominion.  1832.  Revised  edition:  1851.— 
Horse- Shoe  Robinson.  A  Tale  of  the  Tory  Ascendancy. 
1835. 

KENNEDY,  SARA:  The  Wooing  of  Judieth.    1902. 

KESTER,  PAUL:  His  Own  Country.  c!917.  (A  very  un- 
Virginian  view  of  the  race  problem.) 

KESTER,  VAUGHAN  :  John  o'  Jamestown.  c!907. 

KILBY,  L.  CLAY:  *Vernon  Lonsdale.  1876.  (Swem.  Mc- 
Ilwaine.) 

KING,  R. :  The  Chief's  Daughter;  or,  The  Settlers  in  Vir- 
ginia, n.  d.  (Whitney  gives  the  date  as  1868.) 

KINGSTON,  W.  H.  G. :  *The  Settlers:  A  Tale  of  Virginia, 
n.  d.  (Whitney.) 

KNOX,  DOROTHEA  HENESS:  *The  Heart  of  Washington. 
1909.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

IMHCBERUS,  G. :  *Die  Heldin  von  Yorktown.  Tragoedie. 
(Whitney.) 

LANE,  ELINOR  MACARTNEY:  *The  Mills  of  God.  1901. 
(Baker.) 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [69 

LANE,  JOHN  HADEN  :  *The  Birth  of  Liberty:  A  Story  of 
Bacon's  Rebellion.  1909.  (Baker.) 

LANIER,  SIDNEY  :  Tiger-Lilies.  A  Novel.    1867. 

LA  SELLE,  E.  P. :  *A  True  Virginian.  1893.  (Swem.  Mc- 
Ilwaine.) 

LATIMER,  MARY  ELIZABETH  (WORMELEY)  :  Our  Cousin  Ve- 
ronica ;  or,  Scenes  and  Adventures  over  the  Blue  Ridge. 
New  York.  1855. 

LA WSON,  THOMAS  W. :  *Friday  the  13th.  1907.  (Bk.  Rev. 
Digest.) 

LEA,  FANNIE  HEASLIP  (Mrs.  Fannie  Heaslip  Agee)  : 
^Quicksands.  1911.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest).— *  Sicily  Ann. 
1914.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

LEE,  GEORGE  TAYLOR:  *A  Virginia  Feud.  1907.  (Lib.  Sn. 
Lit.) 

LEE,  JAMES  HAMPTON  :  Letters  of  Two;  or,  The  True  His- 
tory of  a  Late  Love  Affair.  c!901. 

LESLIE,  LAWRENCE  J. :  Lost  in  the  Great  Dismal  Swamp. 
Juvenile.  c!913. 

LINCOLN,  NATALIE  SUMNER:  The  Lost  Despatch.    1913. 
LINDSAY,  NICHOLAS    VACHEL:     Our    Mother    Pocahontas. 

(This  poem  is  found  in  The  Chinese!  Nightingale  and 

Other  Poems.    1917.) 

LITTLEFOOT,  JESSE  TALBOT  :  *The  Story  of  Captain  Smith 
and  Poca'toontas.  1907.  (Verse.)  ("Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

LOVELL,  MRS.  W.  S. :  ^Pocahontas.  (See  J.  M.  Clapp: 
Plays  for  Amateurs,  p.  39.) 

LUCAS,  DANIEL  BEDINGER:  The  Maid  of  Northumberland: 
A  Dramatic  Poem.  1879. 

LYXDE,  FRANCIS:  *King  of  Arcadia.  1909.  (Bk.  Rev.  Di- 
gest.) 

McCABE,  JAMES  DABNEY:  *The  Aide-de-Camp :  A  Romance 
of  the  War.  1863?  (Lib.  Sn.  Lit.)—  *The  Guerrillas. 
An  Original  Domestic  Drama,  in  Three  Acts.  1863. 
(Roden.) 

McCARDELL,  ROY  LARCOM  :  ^Diamond  From  the  Sky.  1916. 
(Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

MCCARTY,  W.  PAGE:  The  Golden  Horseshoe.  A  Drama. 
1876. 


70]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

MCCLELLAND,  MARY  GREENWAY  :  Princess.  1886.— *A  Self- 
Made  Man.  1887.  (Lib.  Sn.  Lit.)—  *The  Ghost  of  Dred 
Power.  1888.  (Swem.  Lib.  Sn.  Lit.)—  Burkett's  Lock. 
1889.—  ?:  A  Nameless  Novel.  c!891.  — *Broadoaks. 
1893.  (Swem.  Mcllwaine)— The  Wonder- Witch.  (A 
story  published  in  Lippincott's  Magazine,  June,  1894.) 

McGLONE,  SUSIE  G. :  *A  Virginia  Heroine :  A  Comedy  in  3 
Acts.  1908.  (D.  C.  C.) 

MACLEOD,  ANNA  MARY  ("Archibald  Campbell") :   Captain 

MacDonald's  Daughter.   1887. 
McMANus,  THOMAS  J.  LUKE:   *The  Boy  and  the  Outlaw. 

1905.    (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

MAGILL,  MARY  TUCKER  :  The  Holcombes :  A  Story  of  Vir- 
ginia Home-Life.  1871. — *Under  the  Pruning  Knife:  A 
Story  of  Southern  Life.  1888.  (Swem.  Mcllwaine.  Lib. 
Sn.  Lit.) 

MAGRUDER,  JULIA  :  Across  the  Chasm.  c!885. — Miss  Ayr  of 
Virginia,  and  Other  Stories.  c!896. 

MARR,  MRS.  JANE  BARRON  HOPE:  *Stories  and  Papers  [?]. 
Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

MARRIOTT,  CRITTENDEN  :   Sally  Castleton,  Southerner.  1913. 

MARTIN,  JOSEPH  HAMILTON  :  *  Smith  and  Pocahontas :  A 
Poem.  Richmond.  1862.  (Painter.  Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

MASEFIELD,  JOHN:  Lost  Endeavour.  1910. — Captain  Mar- 
garet. 1916. 

MAYO,  JOSEPH  :  Woodbourne :  A  Novel  of  the  Revolution- 
ary Period  in  Virginia  and  Maryland.  1884. 

MINOR,  T.  C. :   *Her  Ladyship.    1880.    (Whitney). 

MITCHELL,  SILAS  WEIR  :  The  Youth  of  Washington :  Told 
in  the  Form  of  an  Autobiography.  1904. 

MOELLER,  PHILIP  :  Pokey,  or  The  Beautiful  Legend  of  the 
Amorous  Indian:  A  Cartoon  Comedy.  (This  burlesque 
of  the  Pocahontas  story  is  found  in  Moeller's  Five 
Somewhat  Historical  Plays.  1918.) 

MOORE,  -  -:  *The  Captives  of  Abb's  Valley.  (Mcllwaine 
and  Lib.  Sn.  Lit.  ascribe  this  novel  to  Rev.  Henry 
Brown,  or  Browne.  Mcllwaine  gives  the  date  as  1854. 
Whitney  ascribes  the  novel  to  Moore.) 

MOORE,  JAMES:  *The  Siege  of  Richmond.  1882.  (Whitney.) 

MOORE,  THOMAS:  A  Ballad:  The  Lake  of  the  Dismal 
Swamp.  Written  at  Norfolk,  in  Virginia.  (1803.) 


VIRGINIA  LIFE;  IN  FICTION  [71 

MORAN,  MRS.  JANE  W.  (BLACKBURN)  :  *Miss  Washington 
of  Virginia:  A  Semicentennial  Love-Story.  (Lib.  Sn. 
Lit.) 

MORAN,  W.  H.  W. :    *From  the  School-room  to  the  Bar. 

1892.  (Dixson.  Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

MORGAN,  GEORGE  :  The  Issue.   1904. 

MORRIS,  GEORGE  POPE  :  Pocahontas.  (This  short  poem  is  re- 
printed in  B.  E.  Stevenson :  Poems  of  American  His- 
tory.) 

MORRISON,  JOHN  B. :  *An  Original  Tale;  Isabella  of  Brooke ; 
Contrasting  the  Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Early  Set- 
tlers of  Pennsylvania  with  .  .  .  1830.  (Wegelin  E. 
A.  F.) 

MOSBY,  MARY  WEBSTER  ("M.  M.  Webster")  :  Pocahontas: 
A  Legend.  With  Historical  and  Traditionary  Notes. 
Richmond.  1840. 

MUSICK,  JOHN  ROY:    *  Pocahontas:    A  Story  of  Virginia. 

1893.  (Swem.  Dixson.)— *A  Century  Toon  Soon.  (Nat. 
Cycl.) 

NEALE,  WALTER,  and  HANCOCK,  ELIZABETH  HAZLEWOOD: 
*The  Betrayal:  A  Novel.  1910.  (Swem.  Bk.  Rev. 
Digest.) 

NELSON,  JAMES  POYNTZ  :  *Balla,  and  Other  Virginia  Stones. 
1914.  (Swem.) 

NEVILLE,  LAURENCE  (pseudonym?):  *Edith  Allen;  or, 
Sketches  of  Life  in  Virginia.  Richmond.  1855.  (Swem. 
Mcllwaine.) 

O'CONNOR,  MRS.  ELIZABETH  (PASCHAL)  :  Little  Thank  You. 
1913. 

ODELL,  EDSON  KENNY  :  *The  Romance  of  Pocahontas.  1912. 
(Verse.)  (Swem.) 

OLNEY,  MARY  ALLAN:  *Harmonia.  1888.  (Whitney.  Gris- 
wold  H.  N.  A.) 

OWEN,  ROBERT  DALE  :  Pocahontas :  A  Historical  Drama,  in 
5  Acts;  with  an  Introductory  Essay  and  Notes.  By  a 
Citizen  of  the  West.  New  York.  1837.  (New  York 
Public  Library.) 

PAGE,  J.  W. :  *Uncle  Robin,  in  His  Cabin  in  Virginia,  and 
Tom  Without  One  in  Boston.  1853.  (A  reply  to  Mrs. 
Stowe.)  (Swem.  Johnson.) 


72]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

PAGE,  SARAH  CHICH ESTER:  Virginia  Potluck.  (A  short 
story  published  in  Lippincotfs  Magazine,  October. 
1905.) 

PAGE,  THOMAS  NELSON  (See  also  Gordon,  A.  C. )  :  In  Ole 
Virginia.  1887.  — Two  Little  Confederates.  1888.- 
Among  the  Camps ;  or,  Young  People's  Stories  of  the 
War.  1891.— On  Newfound  River.  1891.  1906.— Elsket 
and  Other  Stories.  1891.— Pastime  Stories.  1894.  1898. 
—The  Burial  of  the  Guns.  1894.— The  Old  Gentleman 
of  the  Black  Stock.  1897.  1900.— Two  Prisoners.  1898. 
1903.— Red  Rock:  A  Chronicle  of  Reconstruction.  1898. 
—Santa  Claus's  Partner.  1899.— A  Captured  Santa 
Clans.  1902.— Gordon  Keith.  1903.— Bred  in  the  Bone. 
1904.— Under  the  Crust.  1907.— John  Marvel,  Assis- 
tant. 1909.— The  Land  of  the  Spirit.  1913. 

PALMER,  FREDERICK  :  The  Vagabond.   1903. 

PARRISH,  RANDALL:  My  Lady  of  the  North:  The  Love- 
Story  of  a  Gray-Jacket.  1904. 

PATTERSON,  MARJORIE  :  *Dust  of  the  Road.  1913.  (  Bk.  Rev. 
Digest.) 

PAULDING,  JAMES  KIRKE:  Westward  Ho!  A  Tale.  New 
York.  1832.— The  Puritan  and  His  Daughter.  New 
York.  1849. 

PAYSON,  WILLIAM  FARQUHAR:   Barry  Gordon.   1908. 

PEARSON,  MRS.  EMILY  CLEMENS:  Cousin  Franck's  House- 
hold, or  Scenes  in  the  Old  Dominion.  Boston.  c!852. — 
*  Ruth's  Sacrifice;  or,  Life  on  the  Rappahannock.  1863. 
(Whitney.) 

PEMBER,  MRS.  P.  Y. :  A  Virginia  Visit.  (A  short  story  pub- 
lished in  Harpers  Magazine,  December,  1883.) 

PENDLETON,  EDMUND:   A  Virginia  Inheritance.    1888. 
PEPLE,  EDWARD  HENRY  :   The  Littlest  Rebel.   1911. 

PEYTON,  JOHN  LEWIS:  Tom  Swindel;  or,  The  Adventures 
of  a  Boomer.  1893. 

PICKETT,  LASALLE  CORBELL  (Mrs.  George  E.  Pickett)  :  The 

Bugles  of  Gettysburg.   1913. 
POLLARD,  ELIZA  F. :    *The  Old  Moat  Farm:    A  Story  of 

Queen  Elizabeth's  Days.    1905.    (Baker.) 

POWER,  THOMAS  F. :  *The  Virginia  Veteran ;  a  Military 
Drama  in  Four  Acts.  1874.  (D.  C.  C.  Whitney.) 


VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION  [73 

POWERS,  WILLIAM  DUDLEY  :  *Uncle  Isaac ;  or,  Old  Days  in 
the  South.  1899.  (Verse.)  (Swem.  Painter.) 

PRATT,  LUCY:  *Ezekiel.  1899.  (A  story  of  Hampton  In- 
stitute.) (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

PRESTON,  MRS.  MARGARET  JUNKIN  :  *Silverwood :  A  Book 
of  Memories.  1856.  (Lib.  Sn,  Lit.  Johnson.) — Beech- 
enbrook :  A  Rhyme  of  the  War.  Richmond.  1865. — 
Aunt  Dorothy :  An  Old  Virginia  Plantation  Story.  1890. 
(First  appeared  as  Aunt  Dorothy's  Funeral  in  Harper  s 
Magazine,  October,  1889.) — Colonial  Ballads  and  Son- 
nets. 1887. 

PREVOST,  L'ABBE  :  Le  Philosophe  Anglais  ou  Histoire  de  M. 
Cleveland,  fils  naturel  de  Cromwell, ecrite  par  lui-mesme, 
et  traduite  de  Tan'glais  par  Tauteur  des  memoires  d'un 
homme  de  qualite.  1728.  (See  Gilbert  Ohinard : 
L'Amerique  et  le  Rev?  Exotique,  pp.  281  ff.) 

PRYOR,  SARA  AGNES  (Mrs.  Roger  A.  Pryor)  :  The  Colonel's 
Story.  1911. 

PUTNAM,  MRS.  SALLIE  A.  (BROCK)  :  Kenneth,  My  King. 
1873. 

PYLE,  HOWARD:  Within  the  Capes:  A  Sea  Story.  1885  — 
*  Story  of  Jack  Ballister's  Fortunes.  (Utica  Public  Li- 
brary List  of  Historical  Fiction.) 

RATHBORNE,  ST.  GEORGE:  *Miss  Fairfax  of  Virginia.    (Lib. 

Sn.  Lit.) 
RAYMOND,  JAMES  F. :    *The  Lost  Colony.    c!891.    (Swem. 

Mcllwaine.) 

RAYMOND,  WALTER  MARION  :  Citronaloes.  1888. — Rebels  of 
the  New  South.  1905. 

REED,  SARAH  A. :  *A  Romance  of  Arlington  Hou.se.  1907. 
(Juvenile.)  (Baker.) 

RILEY,  ELIHU  S. :  *Yorktown ;  American  Historic  Drama  in 
5  Acts.  1911.  (D.  C.  C.) 

RIVES,  AMELIE  (Princess  Troubetzkoy)  :  The  Quick  or  the 
Dead,  1888.  (First  appeared  in  Lip  pine  ott's  Magazine, 
April,  1888.)— Virginia  of  Virginia.  1888.  (First  ap- 
peared in  Harper's  Magazine,  January,  1888.) — Tanis, 
the  Sang-digger.  1893.— *Hidden  House.  1912.  (Bk. 
Rev.  Digest.)—  *World's-End.  1914.  (Bk.  Rev.  Di- 
gest.)—*  Shadows  of  Flames.  1915.  (Bk.  Review  Di- 
gest.)—The  Ghost  Garden.  1918. 


74]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

RIVES,  HALLIE  ERMINIE  (Mrs.  Rives- Wheeler)  :  A  Furnace 
of  Earth.  c!900.— Hearts  Courageous.  c!902.— Satan 
Sanderson.  c!907.  —  The  Valiants  of  Virginia.  c!912. 

ROBERTSON,  JOHN  :  *  Virginia;  or,  The  Fatal  Patent. — A 
Metrical  Romance  in  Three  Cantos.  Washington.  1825. 
(Painter.  Johnson.) 

ROBINS,  EDWARD  :  A  Boy  in  Early  Virginia ;  or,  Adventures 
With  Captain  John  Smith.  c!901.  (Juvenile.) 

ROBINS,  SALLY  NELSON  :    A  Man's  Reach.   1916. 

ROBINSON,  ANNIE  E.,  and  CHARLES  W. :  *Pocahontas.  Li- 
bretto of  Opera  in  5  Acts.  1891.  (D.  C.  C.) 

ROCHE,  JAMES  L. :  *Appomattox,  the  War  of  the  Blue  and 
the  Gray:  A  Drama  in  5  Acts.  1892.  (D.  C.  C.) 

ROE,  E.  P.:  "Miss  Lou."  c!888. 

ROPP,  EDWIN  OLIVER  ("Tecumtha")  :  Pocahontas.  1906. 
(Drama.) 

ROSE,  JOHANN  WILHELM  :  *Pocahontas,  Schauspiel  mit  ge- 
sang,  in  fuenf  akten.  Ansbach.  1784.  (O.  G.  T.  Son- 
neck  :  Catalogue  of  Opera  Librettos  Printed  before  1800. 
Vol.  I.  1914.) 

Ross,  CLINTON  :  The  Scarlet  Coat.   1896. 

RYALS,  J.  V. :  *  Yankee  Doodle  Dixie ;  or,  Love  the  Light  of 
Life :  An  Historical  Romance  Illustrative  of  Life  and 
Love  in  an  Old  Virginia  Country  Home.  .  .  .  1890. 
(Swem.) 

RYAN,  MARGARET  :   *  Sue  Terry.   1904.    (Mcllwaine.) 

SAGE,  WILLIAM  :  The  Claybornes :  A  Romance  of  the  Civil 
War.  1902.— A  Maid  of  Old  Virginia:  A  Romance  of 
Bacon's  Rebellion.  1915. 

SCOTT,  JOHN  REED:  *  Woman  in  Question.  1909.  (Bk.  Rev. 
Digest.)—  *Red  Emerald.  1914.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

SEA  WELL,  MOLLY  ELLIOTT  :  The  Berkeleys  and  Their  Neigh- 
bors. c!888.  —  Throckmorton.  c!890.  —  *Children  of 
Destiny.  1893.  (Griswold  H.  N.  A.)— Through  Thick 
and  Thin.  1893.— A  Virginia  Cavalier.  c!896.— The 
Victory.  1906.— Betty's  Virginia  Christmas.  1914. 

SHARTS,  JOSEPH  :   The  Vintage.    1911. 

SHERMAN,  JOHN  W. :  *Virginia:  A  Drama  of  the  Times 
that  Tried  Men's  Souls.  1892.  (D.  C.  C.) 


VIRGINIA  LIFE)  IN  FICTION  [75 

SHERWOOD,  MARGARET  POLLOCK  :  *Coming  of  the  Tide. 
1906.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.)  . 

SIGOURNEY,  MRS.  LYDIA  HUNTLEY  :  Pocahontas,  and  Other 
Poems.  New  York.  1841.  (Columbia  University  Li- 
brary. ) 

SMITH,  FRANCIS  HOPKINSON  :  Colonel  Carter  of  Cartersville. 
1891.  (First  appeared  in  the  Century  Magazine,  No- 
vember, 1890,  to  April,  1891.) —Colonel  Carter's 
Christmas.  c!903. 

SMITH,  SEBA  :  Powhatan :  A  Metrical  Romance,  in  Seven 
Cantos.  New  York.  1841. 

SNEAD,  GEORGIE  TILLMAN  :  *Beneath  Virginia  Skies.  1904. 
(Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 

SNIDER,  DENTON  J. :  Lincoln  at  Richmond :  A  Dramatic 
Epos  of  the  Civil  War.  c!914. 

SOUTH  WORTH,  MRS.  EMMA  DOROTHY  ELIZA  (NEVITTE)  : 
The  Mother-in-Law :  A  Tale  of  Domestic  Life.  Phila- 
delphia. 1860. 

SPAULDING,  MARY  C. ;  and  MILLER,  IDA  FARR  :  *A  Virginia 
Colonel;  introducing  a  few  incidents  from  The  Vir- 
ginians. 1898.  (D.  C.  C.) 

SPRATT,  DORA  E.  W. :  *Christmas  Week  at  Bigler's  Mill. 
(Dixson.) 

SPRINGER,  MARY  ELIZABETH  :   Dolly  Madison :   A  Story  of 

the  War  of  1812.    1906. 
STAN ARD,  MARY  NEWTON  :   *The  Dreamer.    1909.    (A  story 

of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.)     (Nield.) 

STEVENSON,  BURTON  EGBERT:    A  Soldier  of  Virginia:    A 

Tale  of  Colonel  Washington  and  Braddock's  Defeat. 

1901.— The  Heritage:   A  Story  of  Defeat  and  Victory. 

1902. 
STEWART,    ROBERT   ARMISTEAD:     Knights   of    the    Golden 

Horseshoe  and  Other  Lays.   1909. 

STIMSON,  FREDERIC  JESUP  :  King  Noanett :  A  Story  of  Old 
Virginia  and  the  Massachusetts  Bay.  1896. 

STOCKTON,  FRANCIS  RICHARD  :  The  Late  Mrs.  Null.  c!886. 
—The  Girl  at  Coburst.  1898. 

STODDARD,  W.  O. :  *The  Spy  of  Yorktown.  (From  an  ad- 
vertisement.) 


76]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

STRATEMEYER,  EDWARD:  With  Washington  in  the  West;  or, 
A  Soldier  Boy's  Battles  in  the  Wilderness.  1901.  (Ju- 
venile.) 

STUART,  RALPH;  and,  BRAGDON,  DUDLEY  A.:  *Appomatox. 
1897.  (Drama.)  (D.  C.  C.) 

THACKERAY,  WILLIAM   MAKEPEACE:   The   Virginians:    A 

Tale  of  the  Last  Century.    1857-9. 
THORNTON,  M.  JACQUELINE  :  Di  Gary.   1879. 
THRUSTON,  LUCY  MEACHAM  :   A  Girl  of  Virginia.    1902. — 

Where  the  Tide  Comes  In.    1904.— Called  to  the  Field : 

A  Story  of  Virginia  in  the  Civil  War.    1906. 
TIERNAN,  MARY  SPEAR  (NICHOLAS)  :  Homoselle.  c!881.— 

Suzette.   1885.— *Jack  Horner.   1890.    (Baker.) 
TIFFANY,  OSMOND:    *Brandon.    New  York.    1858.    (Gris- 

wold  H.  N.  A.) 
TOMLINSON,  EVERETT  T. :    *Light  Horse  Harry's  Legion. 

1910.    (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 
TOWNSEND,  CHARLES  :  The  Vagabonds :  An  Original  Drama 

in  Three  Acts.    c!895.— The  Pride  of  Virginia:    An 

Original  Comedy  in  Four  Acts.   c!901. 

TUCKER,  GEORGE  :  The  Valley  of  Shenandoah ;  or,  Memoirs 
of  the  Graysons.  New  York.  1824.  (Columbia  Uni- 
versity Library.) 

TUCKER,  NATHANIEL  BEVERLEY:  The  Partisan  Leader:  A 
Tale  of  the  Future.  Washington.  1856.  (i.  *.  1836). 
Reprinted,  New  York,  1861,  as  A  Key  to  the  Disunion 
Conspiracy.  .  .  .  Reprinted,  Richmond,  1862. — George 
Balcombe.  A  Novel.  New  York.  1836.  (Virginians  in 
Missouri.)  (Both  novels  are  in  the  New  York  Public 
Library.) 

TUCKER,  SAINT  GEORGE:  Hansford:  A  Tale  of  Bacon's 
Rebellion.  Richmond.  1857.  (Columbia  University  Li- 
brary. ) 

TUNSTALL,  NANNIE  WHITMELL:  "No.  40."  A  Romance  of 
Fortress  Monroe  and  the  Hygeia.  Third  edition.  1890. 

TURPIN,  EDNA  HENRY  LEE :   Happy  Acres.   1913. 

TWAIN,  MARK  (Samuel  Langhorne  Clemens),  and  WAR- 
NER, CHARLES  DUDLEY:  The  Gilded  Age:  A  Tale  of 
To-day.  c!873.  (Colonel  Sellers  is  a  Virginian.) 

TWAIN,  MARK  :  The  Tragedy  of  Pudd'nhead  Wilson.  1894. 
(Virginians  in  Missouri.) 


VIRGINIA  LIFE;  IN  FICTION  [77 

TYLER,  ODETTE  (Elizabeth  Lee  Kirkland)  :  *Boss:  A  Story 
of  Virginia  Life.  (Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

TYRRELL,  HENRY:  Shenandoa'h:  Love  and  War  in  the  Val- 
ley of  Virginia,  1861-5.  Based  upon  the  Famous  Play 
by  Bronson  Howard.  c!902. 

ULLMANN,  MARGARET:   Pocahontas:  A  Pageant.  c!912. 

VANCE,  WILSON  J. :   Big  John  Baldwin.   1909. 

VAN  VORST,  MARIE  :  Big  Tremaine :  A  Novel.   1914. 

WALDRON,  WILLIAM  WATSON  :  Pocahontas,  Princess  of  Vir- 
ginia; and  Other  Poems.  New  York.  1841. 

WALL,  MARY  VIRGINIA:  The  Daughter  of  Virginia  Dare. 
1908.  (A  Story  of  Pocahontas.) 

WARNER,  CHARLES  DUDLEY  (see  also  Twain,  Mark)  :  Their 
Pilgrimage.  1886.  (First  appeared  in  Harper's  Maga- 
zine, also  in  book  form,  in  1886.  The  original  title  page 
reads  1887.) 

WARREN,  B.  C. :  Arsareth :  A  Tale  of  the  Luray  Caverns. 
c!893.  (Probably  the  only  Virginia  novel  which  has  an 
overseer  as  hero.) 

WARREN,  MRS.  MAUDE  LAVINIA:  ^Barbara's  Marriages. 
1915.  (Bk.  Rev.  Digest.) 

WEBSTER,  J.  PROVAND:  *Children  of  Wrath.   1899.  (Baker.) 

WHITHAM,  GRACE  I. :  *Basil  the  Page :  A  Story  of  the  Days 
of  Queen  Elizabeth.  1908.  (Juvenile.)  (Baker.) 

WHITMORE,  GEORGE  S. :  *In  the  Old  Dominion ;  in  3  Acts, 
5  Scenes.  1898.  (D.  C.C.) 

WHITMORE,  WALTER  :  *Wilburn :  A  Romance  of  the  Old 
Dominion.  (Whitney.) 

WILEY,  GEORGE  E. :  *  Plantation  Tales.  1906.  (Swem.  Mc- 
Ilwaine.) 

WILLIAMS,  CHARLES  E. :  *The  Penalty  of  Recklessness ;  or, 
Virginia  Society  Twenty  Years  Ago;  a  Thrilling  Rx> 
mance,  a  Tale  of  Love,  Duelling,  and  Death,  as  Enacted 
Among  the  F.  F.  V.  1884.  (Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 

WILLIAMS,  MRS.  FLORA  MCDONALD:  Who's  the  Patriot?  A 
Story  of  the  Southern  Confederacy.  1886. 

WILSON,  RICHARD  HENRY  ("Richard  Fisquill")  :  *Mazel. 
(Lib.  Sn.  Lit.) 

WINSTON,  NANNIE  B. :  *The  Grace  of  Orders.  c!901. 
(Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 


78]  VIRGINIA  LIFE  IN  FICTION 

WINTERBURN,  FLORENCE  HULL  :  *Southern  Hearts.  1900. 
(Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 

WISE,  HENRY  A. :  The  Life  and  Death  of  Sam,  in  Virginia. 
By  a  Virginian.  Richmond.  1856.  (Know-nothingism 
in  Virginia.) 

WISE,  JOHN  SERGEANT:  The  Lion's  Skin:  A  Historical 
Novel  and  a  Novel  History.  1905. 

WiSTER,  OWEN  :  The  Virginian :  A  Horseman  of  the  Plains. 
1902. 

WOOD,  ANNIE  COGSWELL  ("Algernon  Ridgeway")  :  *  West- 
over's  Ward.  1892.  (Lib.  Sn.  Lit.)— Diana  Fontaine. 
1891. 

YOUNG,  MARY  STUART  (Mrs.  Louis  G.  Young) :  *The  Grif- 
fins: A  Colonial  Tale.  1904.  (Swem.  Mcllwaine.) 

THE  END 


VIRGINIA  LIFE)  IN  FICTION  [79 


VITA 

Jay  Broadus  Hubbell  was  born  May  8,  1885,  in  Smythe 
County,  Virginia.  He  attended  Windsor  Academy  during  the 
session  of  1901-02.  He  spent  the  next  three  years  at  the 
University  of  Richmond  (then  Richmond  College),  and  took 
his  B.  A.  degree  in  1905.  While  there,  hie  took  courses  in 
English  under  Professors  J.  A.  C.  Chandler  and  F.  C.  Wood- 
ward. In  1905-06  he  was  Instructor  in  Latin  and  Greek  in 
Bethel  College,  Russellville,  Kentucky.  The  next  two  years 
he  spent  in  graduate  work  in  Harvard  University.  He  took 
his  A.  M.  degree  there  in  1908.  At  Harvard  he  took  courses 
under  Professors  Kittredge,  Baker,  Neilson,  Perry,  Robin- 
son, Schofield,  Von  Jageman,  Briggs,  and  Sheldon.  In  1908- 
09  he  was  Instructor  in  Englishi  in  the  University  of  North 
Carolina.  The  sessions  of  1909-10  and  1914-15,  the  fall  of 
1910,  and  the  spring  and  summer  of  1919  he  spent  in  grad- 
uate study  at  Columbia  University.  While  there,  he  took 
work  with  Professors  Thorndike,  Trent,  Matthews,  Erskine, 
Krapp,  Fletcher,  Ayres,  and  Jespersen.  During  the  spring 
of  191 1  he  was  head  of  the  Department  of  English  and  Pub- 
lic Speaking  in  the  Columbus,  Georgia,  High  School.  From 
1911  to  1914  he  was  Associate  Professor  of  English  at  Wake 
Forest  College.  He  came  to  Southern  Methodist  University 
in  the  fall  of  1915 ;  and,  with  the  exception  of  a  year  and  a 
half  spent  in  military  service  and  graduate  work  in  Columbia 
University,  he  has  been  teaching  there  continuously  ever 
since.  He  is  now  acting  head  of  the  Department  of  English. 
He  is  joint-author,  with  his  colleague,  Professor  John  O. 
Beaty,  of  An  Introduction  to  Poetry  (Macmillan). 


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